hi guys, i need urget help. i did fresh winxp install on my 20gig partition. after installing norton, goback etc i had to reboot. but now my pc doesnt boot, it says; load error! press a key to reboot...DISK BOOT FAILUR, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. i dont know what to do. i have 80gig hd partition into 2, 20 and 60 gig respectively. i tried to reinstall again by booting from winxp cd but when selecting partition to install it just displays one 80gig partition... i'm lost, luckily i can post for help through my pda. plz som1 help. thanx

Did you do the reinstall on the 2 gig partition? If so, you will probably have to start over again as the 2 gig partition is too small for the install. REboot and reformat and reinstall.

when you insert the windows xp cd and boot from it, you should still see the active windows install. all you need to do is a repair on that install and everything should take care of itself. worst case, install xp on the 80gb partition, boot into windows, and look for the other partition. You should be able to edit your boot.ini file to dual boot into the first partition, run a checkdisk and see if it comes up with any erros. Mobile: Dell 9100 WinXP P4 3.2Ghz, 2GB RAM System 1 P4 2.6GHz, 2.0GB RAM WinXP Pro System 2 MacMini 1.25Ghz, 512MB OSX Panther Dell Axim X30 624Mhz, WM2k3

Or try this. How to do a system repair.--Boot from the xp cd and go past the recovery console to the install menu. Select repair the existing installation. You won't lose any data except the xp updates. Unless you have a slipstream sp1 cd you will have to d/l sp1 and all subsequent updates. You MUST have at least SP1 installed and the updates for security reasons. Be sure the firewall and A/V is active before going online as you will be susceptible to sasser and msblaster. If you don't want SP2 go to autopatcher.com and d/l SP1 and subsequent updates.

I have tried doing the above but didnt work. Before in winxp installation I could select 20gig or 60gig partition to install windows. 20gig is the one has my o/s on and the 60gig is where my vital working files and downloads. When I boot from the xp cd now it only shows me one 80gig partition instead of 2. If I try to install on the 80gig it says the partition is incorrect or something and that I should delete it and creat a another one. But I have data on there so I cant. After booting from xp cd it says 3 option, install, recovery and exit. If I choose the recovery console option it takes me to msdos screen and says select o/s to repair: 1: c:\windows I have selected the above but doesnt solve the problem. any more help guys..

Go here for the ultimate boot disk. http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,8303,00.asp Also slave it to another machine to retrieve the data or install another hd and install xp and slave it. Also runtime.org for GetDataBack. Also google to knoppix and run it.