I have an existing win xp system and installed new backtrack2 on the hard drive. It did not gave me a dual boot but boots on bactrack only and is hanging giving "kernel panic - not syncing:vps:unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(8,5)" message. I booted with road started to see if my xp is still there, and it is still there. I tried to recover install xp but still it is booting on with backtrack. I guess I made a gogoo on the installation of the backtrack but I would like to bring it again with my first xp system then work out with backtrack later. Can you please tell me how to get rid of the backtrack boot and recover my xp? I did not want to fresh install the xp as I have datas and programs I badly need to use asap. Thanks in advance.

Never tried Backtrak or Backtrack 2, but took a look at their wiki page.

It looks like there are a lot of changes in the new version, including the installation process.

That aside, did you follow the directions on the wiki for installation?

It looks like you do not have Lilo (are they still using Lilo?) or the bootloader properly configured. Is there an entry for XP on the boot menu? In other words, did you set it up as a dual boot configuration and\or follow the directions on the wiki?

There is a good video on this from the wiki, although it may be for the older version. Did you view this video?

But to answer your question, as long as you still see the Windows partition there, did you try to boot into Windows recovery and use the fixboot and fixmbr commands to recover the master boot record?