How do i re-install windows?

[middots3]

right, when i load my old laptop up a menu with the following shows up:

FLOPPY
HARDDISK
CD-ROM
PXE

under this it says "press enter on highlighter to choose boot device".
ive tried all 4, and nothing happens?
does anybody know what i have to do to access windows again?

thank you

[chroma]

looks like the bootsector on your had drive is corrupt.

Id slap in my windows disk and select repair instad of install, this should repair the bootsector and allow you to get back into windows.

[middots3]

i havnt got a windows disk mate thats another problem?
how else could i do this?

[middots3]

ive even jus burned a xp gamer edition iso to a cd and tried booting that but to avail
anyone know what to do ?

[Sirus]

Theres a prog called Acronis Disk Director Suite 10..,

if you obtain that one way or another should sort you out although youll have to install it on another pc first then you can burn a wee backup version from an installed version... then when you boot into that it can revive boot sectors and detect multi OS's on partitions for multi boot capabilities and all that other stuff

Or I believe if you install a linux distro on a diff partition with grub....it will pick up the win partition and let you boot into it... correct me if Im wrong

[caveman_nige]

download this iso http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums...-bootcd-26544/
burn it to cd and boot off it.. you will find bootsector repair tools as well as stacks of other pc life saving tools... its an amazing cd to have and all who use it love it.....

[cunny]

ive even jus burned a xp gamer edition iso to a cd and tried booting that but to avail
anyone know what to do ?

What is win xp gamer ed?

Anyway, you will need to configure the bios to boot from a cd/dvd, to do this you need to access the bios of the machine and set the boot priority to cd drive first.

What version of windows is it as you did say 'old'

Once in the windows instalation menu after booting from the cdr, you will need to press r to enter the recovery console. Once you log into windows you will need to type fixmbr, you will get a warning about loosing all data on the drive, so its either yor n.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/483/x...overy_console/

[chroma]

What is win xp gamer ed?

Its a bastardized version of windows XP created by some idiot on tinternet with nLite.

nLite essentialy allows you to take a plain copy of XP and add and remove parts.
Usefull for making your own custom disk with the correct drivers for your computer (if you reinstall windows a lot this makes life a lot easier) it also lets you take out bits, like the entire network suite etc.

The theroy is that these extra components slow down your machine and therefore give you a few frames per second less on crysis.

The downside is that most people putting out these CD's dont really have a clue and remove parts the system needs to really function, then just for good measure load in some viruses to make your computer a drone for a botnet.
Not ideal.

[middots3]

ill try that hiren boot cd in the morning before i go out
and yeah its a sort of custom made win xp, but the one i had ran smoothly

[magicshoot]

never used this version of xp buti have used other ones and most times the only difference is the skins and some other programmes they also disable some of the services that would normally be turned on maybe u could check this out first

[cunny]

You mean 1 of those that have cracked software on them, the cracks show up as virus/trojans, yeah i know and had a feeling thats what it was. Just someone trying to make a fully automated version of windows with drivers/programs.

I just prefer to instal/use the official releases of windows.

[chroma]

not quite, im talking real viruses spidered in (trojans technicly)
ive installed a fair few on virtual machines and watched them connect to strange ports (like IRC for instance straight out of the box without an irc client installed)

Just botnets, distributed computing.

A botnet is just a collection of hundreds/thousands/millions of individual computers hat can be controlled remotely.
Theres lots of money in this, from mildly bad things to sending spam emails, to more severe denial pf service attacks (making every computer in the net ping a certain address effectively saturating its bandwith) to seriously hardcore encryption cracking (the net needs to be huge to even begin to tackle most modern encryption standards)

Back in the early 2000's i owned a small net of my own (623 computers at peak, averaging 200 consistently (in large part due to dialup connections) i did is more as a proof of concept than for anything serious, and it was old schoolboy email virus scamming to gain hosts.