A number of problems w/ install

[cwk]

I have 2 HDs. One has XP, and one had Ubuntu. I fouled up Ubunutu pretty badly, and decided it was a perfect time to try Mint 3.1.

I burned the live CD and tried to install, but it would freeze every time after the desktop showed up, but before I clicked the install icon. I figured it was a bum disc so I reburned the ISO (using DeepBurner). This time I could get as far as 30% into the install but no more (usually less). It just stopped so I had to REISUB. I did this multiple times, but never got any farther.

So now Grub is busted, and I can't get to XP. Or rather, I don't know how to get to XP; there's probably a way.

I thought there might be an issue with the disc drive, so I turned off the one I was using in the BIOS, and tried to use my other drive. This time it got just past the first loading bar, and I got the dreaded "BUG: soft lockup detected on CPU#0!". I tried a couple more times with the same result.

I went back to the BIOS, and turned the first drive back on, but now it too gives the same soft lockup message.

This is a mess.

So now I have a couple questions hopefully someone can help me with.

1) How can I boot into XP so I can check my email and such?
2) Why can't I get this damn thing to install?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Husse]

Welcome to Mint cwk
Sorry for the bad start
This is very often a bad CD
You should
check the md5sum
and burn at the slowest possible speed
What kind of hardware do you have?
You must have come far into the install if the MBR is messed up - installing grub is one of the last things done.
To get back to XP - well that depends on what you have
If you have a real XP CD you start the "Recovery console" (I think it's called that - anyway something similar) and the issue the command "fixmbr" (I'm not sure about major and minor letters here) and you're done.
If you have a recovery CD or similar I don't know if there's some way to do as above. Don't think so - and your best shot would be to borrow a "real CD"
As the install failed I doubt you could repair grub - but you could give it a shot
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _your_grub