[rayek4eq]

It looks like I'm either going to have to repair my installation of XP, or do a complete reinstall. My Linux partition is on a seperate Harddrive, but I'm still worried that after I reinstall Windows that the GRUB bootloader will be overwritten, and that I won't be able to boot into Linux.

Will Windows overwrite GRUB? If so, I think it's fine, because a repair installation of SUSE would probably reinstall GRUB back onto the machine.

Thanks a bunch.

[lynch]

From the Suse knowledge base:

# Boot the system from the DVD or CD1 .
# Select "Installation".
# Select your language. A new window will open up.
# Select "Repair Installed System"
# Subsequently, three YaST System Repair modes are offered:

1.
Automatic Repair
2.
Customized Repair
3.
Expert Tools

Usually the "Automatic Repair" is sufficient to solve the problem.

The "Automatic" option will repair grub.

[jiml8]

or save yourself some time and possible issues due to other things in the repair installaiton of SUSE.

make sure you have a linux boot floppy, then copy off the MBR using the dd command.

dd if=/dev/hda of=/home/myusername/bootrecord bs=512 count=1

Now reinstall Windows XP. After that is all working, boot into linux with your boot floppy, then put the MBR back:

dd if=/home/myusername/bootrecord of=/dev/hda

That's all it takes. Note that I assume that hda is the boot drive; make whatever adjustments are appropriate.

[saikee]

The "Just booting tips" in my signature has documented various ways to restore XP's MBR, Grub and Lilo.

As far as I am concerned you can ditch all of them and get them back in seconds. One bootable Grub floppy, one Dos floppy and a Live CD are the tolls needed.