I supposed to have dual booting with windowsXP but...

[DrHu]

Try starting windows in safe mode to allow a repair/restart into windows OS
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm
http://www.pchell.com/support/safemode.shtml

[Aging Technogeek]

When you installed Mint did you change the bios boot menu to boot from CD-ROM first? If you did you may need to reset the boot menu to boot from the internal hard drive. Some systems do this automatically on the first restart but many do not.

[Kaye]

I'm not sure how much help this will be, but I've read that Windows doesn't like to install if there's another operating system on the machine. Perhaps try installing Windows first, then partition and install Mint for a more successful dual boot. Although I have to admit, I don't know how you would go about doing that, installation is still a bit beyond me at this point. Hope that helps you anyway.

-Kaye

[Aging Technogeek]

Don't bother to format your hard drive before installing Windows. The installer will format the drive automatically. Just put the Windows disk in the CD-Rom drive and restart your computer. During the Bios boot select boot from CD-ROM and let the Windows installer do it's thing. It will format the entire hard drive, install Windows, and install a new NTDLR in the MBR.

Once this is done and you have verified that the Windows installation works. you can install Mint. During the installation, when the partitioner screen comes up, select the option to resize the Windows partition and install Mint on the new free space. Mint will set up a dual boot menu in Grub automatically during the installation process.

If this doesn't work just post back here for more help.

For more on installing Mint read these two threads:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=13252

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=11872

[tinca]

if you go to the following web site, I am sure that your answer is there.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

Best regards Keith

[newW2]

For your windows problem you may want to look at thee following post. A google search turned up many hits on this. However this one seemed to cover NT4/2KXP and had a link to vista help:
http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

///edit /// oh I see you got allot of help.

[markcynt]

You may want to make sure your MBR gets overwritten. I've found deleting and formatting doesn't always do this.

You need to startup the Recovery Console to perform these steps.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058 (Go to option2)

At the DOS prompt window type these commands, pressing enter after each one:

diskpart

list disk

select disk ? ( ? is the disk number you get from list disk)

clean

exit

If you're going to format this is a simple way to make sure your installs start off clean.