can't open xp after having launched ubuntu from live cd

What were you doing at the time of the crash?
What are your system specs?
What is the exact windows error?

reply to gQuigs

I was checking out the screen saver option from within Ubuntu. The system froze for about 15 mins b4 I decided to cold reboot. As a Ubuntu newbie I don't know whether the disruption has caused certain files from being over written in the boot loader stage for XP> the reason being that the live cd may have had to replace settings for normal boot after I had logged out normally from Ubuntu.

I'm using a pretty old spec machine - Dell Optiplex 110 - P3 - 850mhz - Hard drive (Maxtor) 80 Gib - 512 Mb memory - 1 additional internal hard drive (Seagate) with 2 partitions and 1 external hard drive (Tosh). The operating system is Win XP (32 bit) on Partition 1 and Windows server 2003 Partition 2 on the Seagate.

As for the exact error -

A) When I boot up - the system takes me through to the bios boot and then to the boot loader options - 1. Windows XP 2. Windows Server 2003.
B) When I click on Win XP the system takes me through to the windows Safe Mode options screen, i.e. start in Safe Mode, start in safe mode with networking etc etc. (however none of these options work) - once I select any option e.g. start Windows Normally the system takes me through to the Pre-Boot phase for a matter of seconds, i.e. the screen displays the initial windows XP splash screen and then reverts back to rebooting from bios and then back to A above.

thanx again for your help

You need to disable automatic reboot on failure so it will give us an actual error message (BSOD). It might be one of the options displayed next to safe mode. You might have to press F8 a bunch at bootup to get it to come up though.

The Ubuntu LiveCD should not be changing any files on the hard drive.. unless you click install or open them yourself (through computer or mounting manually). Did you do either of them?

Unfortunately, I don't think I've seen an auto reboot switch, but I'll try hitting the F8 key several times. This I take is at the win loader stage as opposed to bios load stage.

The only thing that I've installed whilst in Ubuntu were two codecs to run mpegs and AVI's.

When I first used the live cd, I selected the very first option. i.e. run or install Ubuntu - and that's all

cheers

Does booting to windows server still work? Can you run chkdsk from their to the xp drive?

1. I disabled the auto reboot and got the dreaded 'blue screen of death' - there was no actual error message as such only a set of hex keys.

2. I managed to get server 2003 working and ran chkdsk via run command on the XP drive - the result was that there were no errors dedected.

Q. Do you think if I copy the NTLDR, Boot.ini and NTdetect files from the XP root drive to floopy and then booted the system - it would get my XP working again?

I've tried booting from the CD, and the option to repair the hard drive gets me as far as allowing me into the XP drive with folders etc. I was going to create a new MBR on a seperate partition, but I don't know if this is going to be helpful as I don't want to add to the problem.

Is there any way that you may know that will allow me to restore the hard drive to b4 the problem?

thanx again

I would use Windows Recovery Console off of whichever windows CD you used
last and try some of the fix* commands. If I knew the exact error, I could
give you better advise. Hex isn't very useful to me perhaps the error is
cut off on the screen?