I just wanted to understand how to use this command in the recovery console. My computer cant boot my windows XP because it does not find it in the "boot menu", in the linux boot menu. If I use the fixboot command, will it create a sort of "link" in the boot menu so I can boot my windows from there? I guess I dont understand this command very well. Actually, I'm afraid of using it: I dont want to destroy anything... E.T.

fixboot will write the XP boot sector. This will point to the XP bootloader NTLDR, instead of the LILO or Grub bootloader. Not a good thing if you still want to boot your Linux. I'm pretty sure that the boot menu you are talking about is the Linux one and not the boot.ini file. Recovery will depend on what you did during the install - like write the MBR (which in most Linux distros means the boot sector) but not step through the "other OS's on disk" portion. I think you will have to make a Linux floppy boot disk, TEST IT. Then fixboot from the XP Recovery Console, test to make sure your XP boots okay. Lastly, you'd go back into Linux (via the Linux floppy) and make the needed file of the XP boot sector, redo the Linux boot sector and edit the Linux boot menu. Personally, I couldn't stand the wait - booting LILO, then NTLDR, to get into my MS OSs. So I normally use a floppy to boot my Linux. You'll garner a better explaination posting in the Linux forum. Some of the people there (like Lawrence) know the ins and outs of recovering Linux/MS multi booting better than I do.

yo michael when did he say something about linux? dude he just want to know how to use the xp repair console. to use the repair console in windows xp: go to your bios choose boot from cd pop in your windows xp cd reboot when the welcome sign comes up type r then type chkdsk /r this is gonna take a little while then when finished doing that type fixboot press enter "are you sure blah blah blah" yes this dont take more than 5 seconds type exit reboot go back to your bios reset the old boot sequence. boot from hd 0 i guess or whatever you were booting from

oops! sorry mike he did mention linux

Ok, I did some research, still time to correct my misunderstandings. The MS MBR strictly looks for an ACTIVE partition to get the boot sector from. The MS boot sector will look for either NTLDR or the IO & MSDOS.SYS files to load and execute, thus booting a MS OS. The Linux LILO boot loader is located in the MBR, if you chose that option (under Expert install) or did a default install (I was using Mandrake). Its code is executed to find the 2nd part of the bootloader code from /boot - or, via the menu, load the DOS boot sector to dual/multi boot a Microsoft OS. This leaves the boot sector of the ACTIVE partition alone. So if you had XP installed, the XP boot sector would still be there. Therefore fixboot wouldn't help. fixMBR would, but it would still cak the ability to boot Linux. There are a couple more steps to get into the Recovery Console. There have been links posted, in this forum, to some excellent websites describing the proceedure.

ok thank you everyone! I solved my problem!

Great news, but how did you resolve it?