OK. I'm trying to fix the media pc which is located in my lounge room. Normally it's attached to the LAN and is dual boot (Win XP / Ubuntu). However, it also uses a motherboard that only initially recognises thing on the IDE bus - it doesn't recognise SATA. When it was installed and working this was fine, because the drivers kicked in and the big SATA data disk was readable. The IDE drive was smallish so Linux was run via a GRUB partition on it but actually located on the SATA drive.
In addition to that, I have my Study PC which is also a dual boot (same OSs), my uni laptop (Win XP), Kevin's PC (Win XP) and the Mythbuntu PC which acts as a server for MythTV (and which it is best NOT TO TOUCH while Kevin is away).
I replaced the dead/corrupt IDE drive with a fresh IDE bought from the markets and it's been formatted and has a WIN95 (!) command.com. But right now it's not reading the SADA CD-ROM nor any of the IDE CD-ROMs I've tried plugging into the bus. It does read USB (the mouse and keyboard are wireless and work) and that's what I've been working with.
I still need a Win install on the PC because there are programs I run that are only in Win, although I want to get Linux back as well. When the partition with WIN XP died I could still boot to Ubuntu (because GRUB was on a different partition), but it couldn't read anything in the Win partition.
I'm going to read http://www.vandomburg.net/installing-windows-xp-from-usb/ http://www.pctipsbox.com/installing-windows-xp-using-a-usb-flash-drive/ and http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8 before I do anything.
The setup
In addition to that, I have my Study PC which is also a dual boot (same OSs), my uni laptop (Win XP), Kevin's PC (Win XP) and the Mythbuntu PC which acts as a server for MythTV (and which it is best NOT TO TOUCH while Kevin is away).
I replaced the dead/corrupt IDE drive with a fresh IDE bought from the markets and it's been formatted and has a WIN95 (!) command.com. But right now it's not reading the SADA CD-ROM nor any of the IDE CD-ROMs I've tried plugging into the bus. It does read USB (the mouse and keyboard are wireless and work) and that's what I've been working with.
I still need a Win install on the PC because there are programs I run that are only in Win, although I want to get Linux back as well. When the partition with WIN XP died I could still boot to Ubuntu (because GRUB was on a different partition), but it couldn't read anything in the Win partition.
I'm going to read
http://www.vandomburg.net/installing-windows-xp-from-usb/
http://www.pctipsbox.com/installing-windows-xp-using-a-usb-flash-drive/ and
http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8 before I do anything.