Okay. This is a complicated and sticky situation. I am a noob at computers so please understand. I was trying to make a bootable zip drive using FDISK on a Windows 95 boot disk that I booted onto on my Toshiba Sattelite 1805-s204. I used fdisk to try and make a partition on the zip, which I thought would work. Unfortunately it made a DOS partition on my hard drive, somehow seeming to leave the old partition alone. Because of this, I was unable to boot, so I installed windows xp on the new partition. After I realized all of what was going on, I wanted to be able to boot from the original partition, so I deleted the new partition, hoping that the old one would be booted from by default. It didn't boot. I get a message that says: Insert disk and press any key when ready. I tried using the XP disk to install Windows XP on my original partition, but it said that windows was already installed. So to make a long story short, the old windows installation still exists, it's just not bootable for some reason. Can I make it bootable again and boot from the original Windows Installation? Could someone PLEASE help me???!!! Thank you! -Justin

Ok what you can do is this get a paper and write this down you have to do it carefully. 1. Insert the installation cd 2. boot the computer with this cd. 3. let the cd comfigure your system 4. when this is done you will have 2 options 1. Install 2. Repair If the OS is already installed like you said. press "r" ok this will take to C:\\windows this will show in MS-DOS promt "black Screem" ok it will ask you select. 5. select 1 them press ENTER this will select C:\\windows. 6.Type your Administrator password if you did hava one just press ENTER 7. now that you are there you will type bootcfg /add 8.sellect installation 1 9. for Load Identification type windows XP 10.windows Xp 11 OS windows xp 12.Reboot your pc by typing exit. make sure to take the CD-ROM out. let me know if this works.

Sorry but the above thing will not work simply because you cannot repair an earlier version of windows with a newer version. You need to get a 95 boot disk from bootdisk.com and go into dos to repair the boot sector and repair the 95 operating system. Use the disk to boot into dos and then type HELP and read the help files to learn the right commands to repair. If all that doesn't work then you will need to reformat your system with the windows xp install disc and do a fresh install of xp. To do that, you must change the boot sequence in the bios to "boot to cd-rom first" by booting up and pressing whatever key your system says to get into bios. Usually it is the "Delete" key but can also be "F2" or "Alt" or any of a half dozen others.When you get to the bios look for the boot sequence and change it and then save and exit with the xp install disc in the cd-rom and reboot. Then follow the directions on the disc as to what you wish to do. 1) choose to remove any and all partitions 2) format the drive to NTSF file system(more safe) 3) install xp Self-reverence Self-knowledge Self-control These three alone LEAD to SUCCESS -Alfred Lord Tennyson

c0pyfiles, i think the operating system is XP, he just used a 95 boot disk

I did what you said up to the part where you type bootcfg/add. Here it says C:\Windows. Then I get a message that says "The command is not recognized Type HELP for a list of supported commands." I must note that I just pressed enter for the admin password as I don't know it, and on top of that I am using an xp pro cd-rom to repair an xp home installation. Could these things be a problem? If I can't repair the installation, and I am forced to install the new OS on top of the other, will all my data be lost? Thanks for all the help -Justin

Okay. THIS IS CRAZY but wonderful. While I was about to boot from cd, my computer miraculously booted into Windows once again! I do not know if this means that it is going to stay, but how can I make sure that it will boot from here again in the future? Thanks! -Justin

possibly try: bootcfg /add i think you need the space in there. im not sure about the miraculous fix though ...