I was trying to fix a corrupt hard drive I was given information on trying to recover the files on a failed drive by getting ubuntu and looking around.
My laptop is awaiting a new drive so I only have an old xp desktop and the newer versions of ubuntu won't work. I had to install ubuntu 8.4. I put the disk in, and originally ticked the try but not install option. While looking around, I hit the install button and even though I cancelled the operation (once I realized that it wasn't a good idea) a partition was still created which I didn't find out until I turned the computer on this morning. I got the "master boot record error - insert system disk press enter" message instead of the xp boot I expected. I reinserted the ubuntu disk and saw the partition. I don't know how to get back to xp.
I've been reading the message boards and see grub used to access partitions (if I understood that correctly). I downloaded it but don't have a clue where to go from here.
