Well at least we tried. I'm not sure what happened to the computer but the partition table is just a file which says where things are. If you recreate the table, the data should still be there.

Sorry, but kinda looks like a reinstall is in order.

Well that's that then. I suppose this is part and parcel of learning.

Very very big thanks to you for your time and help. I'm very grateful.

At least now I know to record down my partition table and be wary of norton! Come to think of it, i think i'll uninstall it. Subscription has expired anyway.

Actually, you can do better than record it, you can save it to a file after you get the systems up and running.

I'm more thinking you have/had a virus of some sort than AV actually causing the damage.

Save the ENTIRE PARTITION TABLE to a file using sfdisk.
sfdisk –d /dev/hda > /home/partfile
Save the MBR to a file...
dd if=/dev/hda of=/home/mbrfile bs=512 count=1

Then save them to a disk or something.

Those two files maybe a bit redundant but that doesn't hurt.

Also, you can use system rescue cd with partimage to back up both Windows and Linux.

Edit: If you are looking for a good FREE AV program, do a google for antivir

Try grub-install /dev/hda and let me know.

Thanks,

/Ashish/Pathak.
/Pune/India.

I hope that was just another typo on your part as it should be
/dev/hda2

I'll do that in the future.

I'm already using AntiVir for my second com which is running on XP.

To Ashish Pathak

I did run "grub-install /dev/hda" (without the quotes)
The response was: Command not found

#EDIT: Oh yes, it was /dev/hda Another typo.

Go to /bin directory and there u try this command.

/Ashish.

Errr.... what do you mean "go to /bin directory"? How?

Anyway when I typed the following at shell:

/bin/grub-install /dev/hda : Command not found
/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda : Command not found

Btw, how do I go to any directory /bin or otherwise when I cannot even mount any linux partitions? Perhaps I'm missing something here.

Are you able to do chroot /mnt/sysimage in linux rescue mode??

/Ashish.

No, I cannot do chroot /mnt/sysimage in linux rescue mode. In fact I couldn't even mount anything ... "You don't have any linux partitions" was the message I got.