this was a confusing topic to post...it is a mixture of problems...both hardware and software. and it has to deal with both linux and windows...but i decided to put it here because the main problem is the linux.

i had dual booted my machine with linspire 5.0 and windows xp...since i did linspire 5.0 last...like i am suppose to, it used the grub boot loader. i decided after a while to get rid of linspire and just use vpc within windows to mess around with it. so i formated the partition within windows (prolly not the best idea). this got rid of the os but kept the bootload (which i had expected and was fine with). so when i turn my computer on it brings up the grub boot loader and has me choose between linspire 5.0, diag tools, redect, or windows xp....well...linspire is obviously gone so that just freezes...duh...the diag tools and redect tool still works obviously but does no good. so i just select windows xp and i was fine with that and didnt feel like puting the windows boot loader back on. but then just the other day i swapped my cd burner with a dvd burner to burn amityville horror for my g/f and i started windows copied the cd...no problems what so ever. i shut it down afterwards and went to bed. this morning when i woke up i started my computer and it started loading the grub boot loader and came up with an error (pissing me off to no point) it said loading grub v. w/e then said failure to load (or sumtin) and error 16...thats it...didnt do nuttin else. i restarted a couple times...same thing obvoiusly....

what is error 16!!!! was this caused by the hardware switch ? or is this just sum timeout with linspire's grub boot loader or what !

I NEED MY COMPUTER BACK

You shouldn't have any problem with this one if you still have the your windows installation CD. You've actually removed the files necessary for grub to function properly, hence it isn't working now. I had the same problem a year ago. This can be fixed by restoring the windows Master Boot Record (MBR).

Boot from the Windows XP CD and let all the initial information whiz past. When you come to the first interactive screen, it says 'Press R to start recovery console'. Press R there and then it takes you to a black screen asking to select the type of keyboard. Don't press anything if you've got the default keyboard. Next it shows you the windows installations you've got. Since you've got only one windows installation, it should show something like:



Enter '1' (one) as your choice and then it asks you for your adminstrator password. Enter the adminstrator password and you're then given a command prompt. At the command prompt you have to type the following command as it is:



After this, type 'exit' and the system will reboot. Remove the CD and you should boot into Windows without any problems.

To get more information you can go here.

Another way would be to get some Linux rescue disk (I used Mandrake 10.1 install disk) and boot into rescue mode and select 'Restore Windows boot partition'.

thanx...that refreshes my memory too...cause i had used the mandrake cd to restore the mbr before...but i have never seen it done with the windows xp cd...i actually thought they were stupid enough not to have a way to fix it.... thanks....but my real question is why did it do it all of a sudden, cause i had rebooted it tons of times after i had deleted the linspire partition and then all of a sudden the thing quit on me...it makes no sense to me...but w/e...i figured just maybe the hardware change trigered sumtin...but what would i know (im no linux pro)

That's something I don't know . I had the same problem with LILO when I formatted my Linux partition from windows. It would just display 'LI' on the screen and hang up.

I simply think that when you installed your DVD, Win XP tried to write some info on the MBR. And the MBR was not exactly as XP expected it to be (never modified by something other than Microsoft), and the no-standard thing which happened to work did not work any more.

It has to do with the fact that Windows did a partial format. Rather than erase every byte, it just put an allocation table at the top of the disk which said the rest was free space. Now, grub had a disk offset stored in the bootloader which pointed to the space where your linux partition used to be and where the bootloader files just happened to still exist. Grub does not deal with file systems per se, just the hard physical addresses, so it had no way to know that file had been 'deleted', and it continued to function just fine.

Now, at some point, Windows actually allocated and used those blocks of disk, probably for the mpeg you were burning. Now, all of a sudden, grub looks for its data and finds *video* and has a fit.

It is basically a random time bomb. Some of the viruses that can unformat themselves work essentially the same way.