well, i recently downloaded Slackware 8.1 (it took a lot being on 56k ) well, so i download it, i burn the iso into a cd, then i splitted my main drive (on partiton magic), the new partition was a 3gb one, all was fine, then i pop the cd into the drive and reboot, the cd worked!

All fine, i tought, now i´ll just back up some videos and i´ll install, but when the computer should boot into windows i got a blue screen (the ones you get when u dont boot properly, but it was a partition magic screen, so i think its all fine, ill just wait for the changes that will be done) i get out of the room, but when i come back the screen said there was a problem, i press a key and i get a blue screen, telling me the computer will shut off to avoid hardware damages (WTF!?) , i press a key again, and it reboots so now, every time i reboot it stays there, no windows nor nothing, it just tells me there is an error, ill check the error name or whaterer shows in the screen later.

At last i tried installing win 98 over the current OS (winXP) all fine, but when i get asked if i want it to be compatible with big drives (or something like that) and click yes i get the message: VIRUS!! want to continue? Y/N, so i click Y, then the computer just goes to DOS...

i´ll try to get a floppy drive tomorrow and format the disk, now i´m f*king happy i did a backup of my mp3s before trying anything, just lost some videos, not too bad.

Anyway, can someone help?, i´d like not to format the drive, but if nothing can be done i guess i´ll have to... THANKS!

Sorry dude, never seen that mess before. Sounds like a reformat to me.

Okay, the virus deal is probably from you changing your master boot record.

In Partition magic, you made sure to slice off that 3 gig at the END of the drive right? I don't think Windows likes being shifted around.

Also, you could have just loaded XP over the top of itself. It'll fix a lot of problems if you don't mind reloading your programs.

Anyway, good luck with the mess.

If all else fails, I'd wipe the drive clean, load Windows XP and try again with the Linux install. Just make sure to pay attention to the "Boot Options". Linux isn't the friendliest beast to configure, and if it wrote over something Windows needed, you're going to get errors.


:ADD: I also had that same error "preventing damage to your hardware" when I loaded this POS anti-spyware program called "Snoopfree" to check it out. Damn thing blew my Soundblaster software and I kept getting that error every time I tried to access my audioHQ control panel.
I ended up wiping out snoopfree, blowing out my sound software package (the whole damn thing) and reinstalling to fix the problem.

well, i´ll go and buy a floppy drive tomorrow, but can i download the fdisk? i got windows XP into my laptop (the one i´m using right now) but when i try to make a Msdos boot disk i get an error.,so i was thiking on downloading the files that go on the fdisk and just placing them on a diskett, can this be done¨?

now another weird thing, i tried formatting, but i cant seem to acess the c: drive, i mean, i type C: and i get "into" the drive but when i type "dir" it tells me: wrong media type (mhh, maybe something else, can´t remember quite well) quit, retry, blah blah.
Now this is strange, ill know tomorrow when i get the floppy drive and try formatting.

Also, when i tried to install win98 (again) i was given the choice to format, i clicked on it, but it told me i needed the win98 cd (i was using a backup cd i borrowed from a friend)

Dude.... you do know that Windows O/Ses have to be loaded sequentially?

I mean, you load Windows 98... THEN Windows XP. According to the folks at Microsoft, you're beggin' for trouble trying to do the reverse.

Your running windows XP right?

Try booting from the WindowsXP CD, and go into the recovery console when giveing the option. run FIXMBR once there, this will recover your master boot record. though it will wipe any bootloaders you had installed