laptop wont boot

red vex

a while back i tried to install mandrake 9 on my laptop.
it failed i deleted it but never got around to removing its boot manager which means i had to select windows from a list at startup.
this morning i start the laptop and all i get is L99 99 99
appearing and then it says it can boot.
ive heard that using a boot disk and fdisk\mbr might solve this but i have no floppy drive(the usb key is bootable).
i tried to use knoppix but to no avail either.

has anybody got any idea what i should do?
thanks in advance

Big Chief

boot from cd rom, reinstall windows not do the job?

red vex

dont want to reinstall. data is intact
booting is the problem. the repair option wont work either. thanks all the same

Big Chief

the reinstall without formatting would keep the data intact though i would have thought..

stereo_steve

use a boot disk,

delete the windows folder. (carefull though, your desktop files and "My documents" are in there. Back em up if neccessary

Reinstall windows.

Because you did not format it, all you data will still be there. Some programs will not work but they can be easily reinstalled.

your PRON will still be there!!

neokenzo

Which windows are u using? If your using XP, download M$ boot disk for whichever version you use and you can boot up using the disk. You can use to disk to fix boot problem as well.

red vex

used a fixmbr utility which overwrote the old mbr
strange it was a linux error and not a windows error(prepares to be ridiculed)