Its a asus X83V, has a intel Centrino 2.4g chip, its 3 or 4 years old now and asus doesn't even list it anymore.

It does recognized the usb as a bootable, however is just managed to download the .iso file and did not download a pre boot loader or what ever.
I have a stack of dvd's I use for stuff but apparently they don't have a pre boot .exe on them.
Gonna have to read up on it again as I recall I was booting to the thumb drive (erased after I dual booted) on the smaller laptop.
It was running yesterday, but while in Linux mode I closed it without shutting it down... when I went to close, mint 15 had a bunch of "do you want to redo session or somesuch" and just kept hitting the x button got tired of it and shut it off with the power key.
This morning I tried to boot it up and no go...
I hit the esc key to get to asus bios and then F2 to bios setup... no matter what boot I suggest cd/dvd/hdd/usb the .iso isn't working
So I have to figure out how to make the dvd a boot disc.
The flash sees the serial of the hdd but does not boot it... I hear it doing its thing for about two or three times then it just stops....
Screen shows ASUS and INTEL , drive cackles like norm... then the screen shows the _ blinking at the top left, then the _ moves down two rows and disappears and screen is blank, no more hdd noises....

Your Asus X83V has a DVD read/write drive, so you are good on that aspect.   It should be pre-set as one of your bootable media.

The operating machine, the one that still works, what sort of optical drive does it have?

What sort of CD/DVD burning software do you have on that machine?

Slow down and take a breather.

What you were hit with was a phishing attack -- always make sure you go to the real site and follow real links to download anything or else you may get a munched up computer real quick like.   Phishing sites are something that looks like something, but when you click download you give permission to your machine to download a bunch of evil instead.

A full phishing attack leaves all sorts of worms, trojans and root kits scattered through your machine.   Your machine was walking dead by the time you saw the stuff popping up, it had already downloaded a gut full of evil.

Linux didn't kill your machine, a phishing attack did.  When you saw all that strange stuff popping up that was malware downloading on to your machine.

Still, my comment still stands, don't ever cut off your machine while it says it is working on something.  Linux or not, you can harm your hard drive by turning the power off during low level activities.   It can scramble your root level items and foul up your boot table.  Windows or Linux, it doesn't matter -- let the machine finish before you cut it off.

Did shutting off your machine kill it?  Likely not, it was already root kitted by then and wasn't going to restart no matter what you did.


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Cyberlink is a collection of like 11 freebe things that gets thrown on machines by a vendor so they can say they sold you a "complete" machine.  There are generally like 11 sub-packages and you are looking for the one called Powerburn or Power2go some such name -- it specifically burns DVDs.

Which version of Powerburn or Power2go do you have?

LOL....banged the lower right corner of the little guy with my fist... rofl...now windows says loading files... and will recover windows to whole hard drive... ROFL

Picture me... sitting here talking getting frustrated, bang the laptop with a closed fist (palm side) and it chatters and takes off... ROFL...  

It is not that I need the little guy, just rattles my gourd knowing it was working just yesterday.
So now I guess I wait.... it has the please do not remove the cd-rom ect...ect... but no sound what so ever...i'm not going to bang it again...... just yet

So your Asus X83V had a hard disk failure, huh?

Bet it ain't over yet, but while it is working on recovery, lets see if we can use the good machine (the big one you are posting on) to download a recovery tool.

First, here is the sourceforge page for the boot repair recovery tool.   Satisfy yourself that it isn't another phishing page before you hit go.  

http://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/

To make you feel safer, I just downloaded it myself and I got an iso image of the boot repair disk.

Use your available Windows CD burning tool to burn a CD of the image.  You are "burning an ISO Image" and you are working with CD, not a DVD.

Once you finish what you are currently doing with the Asus X83V, you can use this tool to unscrew your boot sector (assuming it isn't fixed already).

Fair warning, if you use Windows recovery you may wind up with a virgin Windows machine again (and sometimes it just fixes what you had before, I've had it go both ways).  Windows recovery comes across like a crapshoot sometimes.

The boot repair disk just fixes the boot screw up and gives you back your old machine.

Any time you burn an ISO image, it is the ONLY thing that goes on that particular piece of plastic.

Download the boot-disk-repair-64bit.ISO from the source you were given.

Get the downloaded ISO file sitting on your desktop.

I went looking and sure enough I have a HP pavilion that has Power2Go as part of CyberLink DVD suite.  

Open Start> Programs> open CyberLink DVD suite> open Power2Go then look at the menu bar and find Burn Disk Image, open that then put a blank virgin CD in the drive, close it and then click on the top bar (browse) and find the source file on your desktop.  

Your selection SOURCE bar should show the ISO file sitting on your desktop and your selection DESTINATION bar should show your CD sitting in your drive and your GO button should say Burn.   Hit it and wait until it is done.

I just did all these things and got a bootable recovery disk that will unscrew a messed up boot disk.   That is all it will do, but most times in Linux that is all that can go wrong on a dual boot machine since the Linux side can't be attacked by a Windows virus.

Will this help you get back your Windows?  No, but it will let you get back into your Linux that you have already installed (and indeed will sometimes unscrew your Windows as well since a root kit attack hits these boot functions and scrambles them).

Try this simple recovery disk before you get all drastic with Windows Recovery and get yourself back a blank stock Windows machine for your trouble.

Keep the disk, it will come in handy later on I am sure.

Ok....five hours later.....

Disc repair worked... got me in to install vista...

Of course it took five hours to download all the updates... I did a dual partition so I could install Linux mate 16 (which I also burned an image of) and hopefully I will return to an new improved system

I am going to load my favorite game now and it will probably take about 3 hours with updates. All I have to do is attach an icon to it to make it run on Linux 15, hopefully it will be just as easy with 16.

Don't know what it was...but it like my system very much....

The old time pc with xp has chrome browser, we shall see how that works out

Old-rider, glad your Windows Recovery worked, sorry it didn't just fix your existing machine, but instead it did its final default recovery thing, a total rape and scrape putting back the stock everything as of the date the machine shipped.

5 hours to download all the updates -- at least MS was there for you with that string of updates because you are running Vista and that is still supported.   The XP people who do Windows Recovery won't get all that post death date support, what comes off their hidden drive D: will be all they ever get.

All told you will likely have 10+ hours of rebuild in the machine to get your Windows back as good as you can get it.


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Let's talk about a dual boot Linux Mint Mate / XP machine total crash a bit, supposing that the machine actually gets blown up by something that Linux can't handle (which so far has never happened).  But the Windows side can still die fairly easily, which does happen.   The boot sector is the weakness between the systems that gets killed most often.

Boot Disk Repair CD was written for just that situation.   It works automatically.

XP being dead and unsupported, there isn't much point in messing with a Windows Recovery Partition that is going to just load the original XP (or mebbe you might get up to Service Pack 1 level if the machine is new enough) since Microsoft isn't going to support you any more by downloading all the rest of that long string of updates any more.  

Without getting the entire long long string of updates I question the value of even messing with an XP recovery partition as it won't be able to work very well due to being so very very far out of date.

If your dual boot machine dies, this is what you do

Step 1 .....  Boot Repair Disk into the CD/DVD drive, cold boot the machine, it fixes the scrambled NTFS dual boot hard drive sector automatically.   Everything either works right on both sides, works right on the reboot or if not go to step #2.  
(time 15 minutes)

Step 2 .....  If you Linux Mint is running but your Windows XP is dead, just run the Linux half until it is time to upgrade your Linux Mint.   Yeah, I know -- you will likely still try the D: XP Recovery Partition and waste the hours doing it, but in the end you go to Step #3 eventually anyway (just really really pissed off at Microsoft when you go do it).

Step 3 .....  Put in your new upgraded Linux Mint Mate 64 Install DVD -- cold boot, tell it to reformat and take the whole drive.   You are wiping out the entire broken old machine.  You are making this choice to not mess with a very out of date XP version off your recovery drive D: because MS won't do the updating of the old stuff you get off of drive D: all the way up to current status because THEY HAVE LEFT YOU FOR DEAD NOW.  Unsupported.  Totally unsupported.   They don't know you any more.  You have called them twice and they politely told you so.
(time 30 minutes)

Step 3 ......  With the current Mint installed insert your backup thumb drive and get your preferences and bookmarks HTML off of it, plus whatever family photos, etc you backed up as well.
(time 10 minutes)

Elapsed time inside an hour to a complete reload, you are now a Linux user full time.   You are an ex-Microsoft person who doesn't care for Microsoft very much any more.  

One-sided divorces are like that.

But, as you will see, there is happy and contented life after Microsoft.  

Linux is alive and growing all the time, not all dead and grumpy like Microsoft.