Linux Mint big problem..Cant go back to XP...

[SaberX]

OK i'm new to this Linux. I herd alot of good things about Linux Mint.So i downloaded it and made the cd from the ISO.
On the T41 i had XP Pro sp3 on the 40 gig hard drive.
I booted up with the Mint CD and it went to the Linux Mint Live OS.Running off the CD drive. That was fine but i wanted to install it to the hard drive.
So i click on the install icon on the desktop.Went through the 7 stepts for installing it to the hard drive.Then it asked to reboot.Take out the cd and rebooted. Then a error came up.Cant remember it now..But it wouldent go any father.

So i then put in the XP Pro cd to install a fresh copy of XP Pro.
Get to the chose hard drive and it says windows can not access this drive.It shows the 40 gig drive there. But cant install anything to it.Wont let me partition, format the drive,nothing .

So i had to put back in the Linux Mint Live cd and boot up to see if there is any online help.....
I dont know what happened , or how to fix it.

[jdhurst]

You need to remove the partitions. You can try FDISK if you can find it and run it from a diskette or CD, and remove non-DOS partitions. Or you can load the Linux CD and use its tool (I forget - it has been a long time) and remove the linux partitions. ... JDH

[Harryc]

Download and run the active killdisk free version. Then reinstall XP.
http://www.killdisk.com/

[SaberX]

Thanks.
I'm not sure if i'm over my head with this or not...
But i ran the Linux Live cd again. But i realy wanted to try out this Mint . So i said in the end i'll just find a way to clear off the hard drive and reload XP.
So i ran the install again.
This time it went fine.I now booted up into Linux Mint from the hard drive.
I think i may give it a try for a few day.
I always had planed to reformat and install XP again anyway. So i wanted to try this Linux Mint out first.

Everything is so new to me.I love learning how diffrent it is.I have always used Windows.I never even used a Mac,not even played with one at the store.

So far the 10 min's i had this running it looks nice.

[phubai]

You may decide to stay with it! It's a very refined distro. Fast and stable with good package and dependency management. There was a time when I looked down on any distro that wasn't built by me from source but I've changed my opinion and in fact for the first time in several years, I no longer even have a Gentoo partition! I currently have Zen (Slack based), Ubuntu and Mint (I don't know why I have both of these installed since they are so similar, but I can't bring myself to remove either one) and probably spend more time in Mint than the others.
Good-luck and I think you'll enjoy your first Linux adventure. In the way of support, there's a great deal of it on the Mint forums for sure, but don't forget about the Ubuntu forums which appear to be the most active of all. There's a lot of useful information in the Ubuntu wiki's as well, almost all of which can be used on Mint.

[jglen490]

You will find that Linux has much good in it. I'm not a MintLinux user, but I don't think I've ever heard anything bad.

In fact, Linux is so good, even the Linux version of fdisk is better!! The Linux fdisk will set up a partition with an identity for any OS known to humanity. Windows can't reset a Linux partition to Windows, but the Linux version of fdisk can!!