sanx

Hi All,

Greetings..

Am very new here, I need your Help Desparately..

I had two partitions,one with Linux(40Gb) and another with Windows xp(120Gb).
Whenever I started the computer it offered option to choose Linux or Windows Xp.

But when I reinstalled XP and started the computer,It directly goes to Windows xp.No choice is given to choose Linux. ( I know my my MBR seetings has been changed, I want to know how can I fix MBR to boot both xp and linix again?)

I don't have Linux Installation CD.I was using Suse Linux Desktop10.

Please Help me.

Bartender

"Am very new here, I need your Help Desparately.."

OK, first thing to do is calm down. Whatever's done is done. In XP, go into Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management. Or something like that, I'm using Windows 2000.
What do you see? Does XP say that you have one C:\ partition? If so, you deleted your Linux partitions when you installed XP and there's nothing that can be done.
If XP says that you have more than one partition, but they're "Unknown" or something similar, that probably means you re-installed XP to just the partition where it was before and your Linux partitions are still intact.

In the second case, all you would have to do is repair the Linux bootloader, which was wiped out when XP was reinstalled. There are a few different ways to do this, I'm not really familiar with the process and I don't know off the top of my head if SUSE uses GRUB or LILO. If it's GRUB, then the Super GRUB disc will do it. You say you don't have the SUSE disc any more?

If nobody else steps up with more details, google "repair bootloader SUSE" and you'll find instructions for how to do it.

sanx

Thanks a lot Bartender for ur help.

My data on Linux partion is Intact. As I dont have SUSE Cd with me, I cant recover my bootloader.

I tried Knoppix, I copied some important files from Linux Partion to Windows.

Now I have only one option, i.e. delete Linux partion and install any other Linux

Any way Thanks again...

Deleriux

You will need to reinstall grub, as the previous poster has mentioned your disk will likely be using the XP MBR.

I would strongly recommend obtaining a copy of your current MBR. DD should be able to do this with a linux boot disk. sda here I assume is the disk with the MBR your concerned about on it.

To reinstall the boot loader (from linux or a repair disk) it is the command below where sda is your primary booting disk.
Be warned however, the config file for grub is normally location in the /boot partition of a linux install and if this no longer matches up with your bootloading needs this can make the disk unbootable or at least XP unbootable. If it does this you will need to change your grub.conf file to remap the disks before booting. Cant remember off of the top of my head how you do this but there are plenty of examples and documentation flying around the internet that explains.

In the event of disaster when your disk is completely unbootable you should be able to recover it using the backup of your old MBR you made earlier.