Odd question

[thebigdude]

Long story short my grub install went haywire during the week while I was away so my wife just put in the xp recovery disk and started windows setup. After she lets it run until it needs to restart she decides that maybe she better wait on me.

I get back and she tells me my computer is messed up. I start it up and GRUB is toast so I reinstall it using a linux livecd. It works fine now.

Here is the problem. Now when I try to boot into my XP install I am greeted with the XP setup screen and not my already installed OS. From various linux tools I have discovered that there is still about the same amount of data on the HDD from before she attempted to reinstall XP, so I am assuming, which could be way off base, if I can get the setup to quit my old install of XP would work fine.

My question is how do I stop the setup so I can boot into my existing install before it continues and overwrites my current XP setup?

Side note: I don't remember my XP administrator password so if one is needed I also need to know how to recover or reset it.


If anyone can help thanks in advance. I guess this is what I get for not finishing my wife's comp build before I go on a business trip.

 

[Arkaign]

It has probably already wiped out the windows folder itself (this happens before the first reboot when you use a Windows or OS recovery disc), but left your profile under C:\Documents and Settings. Because this wasn't a fresh install, and most likely you didn't relocate the data before this happened, you'll have some new odd folders under Docs and Settings, like : LocalService.NTAUTHORITY, and so on. It's probably best to just yank the hard drive, back up your data, format it, and load things fresh.

The newer Ubuntus have workable NTFS support, so you may be able to copy it off with that to an external drive or perhaps a linux partition.

But yeah, short answer is that your data is mostly likely there, in the original profile folders under docs and settings, but now you have more folders in there with .NTAUTHORITY extensions, a wiped out windows folder/registry, and leftover stuff under program files.

 

[thebigdude]

Thanks for the response.

I was hoping it would be a solution but everything you have said is correct so I guess it is time for a reinstall. Oh well.

Thanks again for the help.