Like I said, I did that, and it didn't work.

EDIT: Here are the steps I just did:

pop Mandrake CDs in
tell the rescue thing to restore the Windows boot loader
rebooted the computer from my boot floppy
typed in ntdetect.com
Watched the blinking cursor blink for a few minutes

I still haven't had any luck.

These are the things I have done:

1. I made a boot diskette with Windows XP (put your diskette in the disk drive and choose format and then choose the option make MS-DOS start up disk or something.)

2. Then you take the files ntdetect.com and ntldr from your win xp cd and put them on the boot diskette.

3. Reboot and put your boot diskette in the disk drive. It will find the ntdetect and ntldr and boots from c:\windows.

How do I make a boot disk if I can't get into Windows?

Don't you know somebody who has Windows XP?

Nope. :-( Are there any places that have boot disks available online that aren't in exe format?

Search with google or something

Hey, I'm running Windows Server 2003 and Im having the exact same problem..

I found this forum through google, I luckily have an MS-Dos boot disk handy, and I'll try copying NTdetect & NTLDR..

I didn't do anything special with Mandrake, just installed it with the basic options, fiddled with it, then tried to boot back into windows..
Hopefully this issue will be addressed, as I just installed Mandrake10 to check it out, and am not strong in Linux.

Edit:
CodeZero, would you mind posting the ntdetect.com and NTLDR files, for us people who dont have an XP cd at hand?

I tried putting those files on my 98 boot disk, along with my boot.ini file. No luck. I even tried renaming my ntldr file to setupldr.bin (a suggestion I found when I Googled about boot disks for XP). Still no luck.

Are you able to boot MDK?
If so, try this
login as root, if X is installed then run startx
Go by Startbutton, System. configuration and choose Configgure your computer
Click on Boot
Then Boot loader
Choose Boot loader to use
Boot Device to use
Then click on Next
You'll be listed what is added so far. If nothing, click on add
Add then mark for Other OS (windows...)
Add a lable and choose from list what Root you have Windows on (/dev/hda1)

And if no X?
On my desktop I found out that grub is different from previous experiences.
Any way. cd /boot/grub (as root)
nano -w menu.lst (Note it is menu.L <-- L not an I ) (or use vi depending on what you've installed )
Read through the file and add
title=Windows XP
root (0,0) (If that is where you have Windows i.e hda1)
chainloader +1 (not sure if required, works if dualboot with Gentoo and Win XP anyway)

Hope this will work for you

I already have an entry for Windows in my Lilo boot menu. It just won't boot.

ok didnt go through and read all the posts but i ran into the same problem. This is what i did and it worked for me. I have the 9.2 mandrake version lying around. I partitioned my drives using the mandrake 9.2 and installed 9.2. I then went back and installed the 10 version using my old partitions from 9.2. I just erased the 9.2 and installed a fresh 10 version. Seems like the partitioning software in 10 doesnt like windows, go figure. This worked for me, not the easiest route to take but it works.

If I remove 10.0 and install 9.2, will Windows work again?

after three days of partitiong and reformatting and installing etc. To answer your question i lost my info on windows and installed a fresh copy of windows. I then went back and installed Xp, and then installed 9.2, and then installed 10 using my existing partitions from 9.2.

I'd REALLY rather not to have to reinstall Windows again. I had to do it before (when I got a really bad virus which made me have to format me HD), and I don't want to deal with the whole XP Activation thing again and have to explain to the "customer service" reps that my copy of the XP CD is indeed a legal one.