I'm not sure where this should go

[Torturednacho]

I'm running Linux Mint 6 on a Acer 5515. It works flawlessly, However someone wants to buy the laptop from me. So I'm trying to install windows on it. Heres the problem

When I put in my WinXP SP2 cd. It stops installing with Bad Sectors. So I put in my Boot n Nuke,

DBAN tells me It finished with non-fatal errors : bad sectors. So I put in my Bad Sector repair tool cd. It get to around the 1m sector, then comes up with a Exception 6 Errorcode 1234 then freezes.

I pull the CD out and boot it normally and it boots right into Mint w/o a problem.
I put in the boot n nuke again, same problem.

Any solutions out there?

 

[BadBigBen]

Any solutions out there?

Yes...

get another HDD...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[smah]

The part that bothers me is that "DBAN tells me It finished with non-fatal errors" .... Bad sectors or not, if DBAN acutallly worked, you would never boot into the already installed Linux OS again. This makes me suspicious that DBAN isn't actaully accessing your drive. I'm not familiar with that machine, but is there something non-standard about the hardware?

 

[smah]

Bingo - When I originally replied to this thread, I didn't bother to look up what linux Mint actually was. For some other discussion, I was looking up Wubi info and found a reference to Linux Mint. It seems that Linux Mint uses a modified version of Wubi called mint4win. So it seems that you may have a windows partition and "Loopmounted Virtual Partition Manager". I suspect that this is somehow causing your difficulties, though I would expect DBAN to wipe all that out. Are you actually booting from the DBAN disk?

Reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(installer)

 

[Torturednacho]

Nothing unusual about the hardware. We bought it the laptop for my fiance about a year ago. Then She seen the Dell mini's and wanted one of those. So I took the Acer when we got her a mini. Put mint on it and the rest is history. I used DBAN on it before and wiped out the vista that was originally on it.

When I toss in any of my windows cd's, Server 03,XPSP2, Vista. It gets to launching windows in the installer and then crashs with a blue screen.

When I put in Zenwalk Linux it installed w/o a problem. Till I went to check the Filesystem size.It was reading 4gigs ..out of 320???...

 

[RhythmAce]

It might be that windows doesn't know what to make of the partitions if that are native linux. Can you use fdisk to repartition the drive to get rid of /swap and any other partitions and create a new ntfs partition?

 

[IPGuru]

Why not just leave Mint on the system for the new owner?

However assuming you have a valid windoze license.

windoze is verry poor at recognizing non windoze partitions
it may be easier to remove/repartition using a live linux CD
Gparted is available as a live disk & should have no trouble removing the existing partitions.

 

[zeland]

At any time you suspect your HDD if flaky, get the HDD manufacturer's DFT (Drive Fitness Test) CD & wipe/zero the whole disk (after making a backup of course). This should relocate any bad or suspected to be bad sectors.

--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--

 

[BadBigBen]

to expand on IPGURU's post:

GParted is a component of many Linux LiveCD's, e.g. PartedMagic which has mounting tools and GParted, with which you can delete the partitions on the drive, so that you can install WindowsXP...

but I would definitely check the drive first with the manufacturers tools...

Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"