have 2 hdds

hda: linux
hda1, hda5 -swap, hda6

hdb: win
hdb1 hdb5

i copied files from hda6 to hdb5 and - win won't boot

yeah well its not clear to me why you copied stuff so feel free to enlightenment me

2) if hda1 was once C partition and hda5 was your other MS partition then when you copied to hdb1 and hdb5 ....they will still be ok but its your bootloader that needs some work.

3) if bios boots to drive hda...its bootloader points to files on hda and not hdb get it?

4) the solution is install grub into hda MBR and use my tutorial to chainload to the correct C partition which I am guessing is hdb1 (and its booting files ntldr etc)

5) if you have a live cd such as knoppix or kanotix then boot it and open a terminal and then edit the file you NOW find on hda1 or hda5 or hda6 for the /boot partition or folder for
/boot/grub/menu.lst

add a new line

title MS
root (hd1,0) ....assuming C is hdb1....see tut on how to figure it out
chainloader +1


6) Edit ....you do not say if you can boot into Linux can you?

i use lilo

booting was ok till i copied those files
hdb is split - C: D:
i copied files to D:

Not enough information. "Those files" and "I copied files to D:" does not tell us anything.

What files did you copy including source and destination directories?
What command(s) did you use to copy the files. GUI or command line?
Were you running windows or linux? (I assume linux)
What are the windows error messages.

i boot linux
and make backup file.tar

mount /dev/hdb5 /mnt/usb-storage
mkdir /mnt/usb-storage/backup
cp "file.tar" /mnt/usbstorage/backup/

i restart
lilo:

linux
windows

i select windows
message: loading windows...

freeze...

Obviously hdb5 is not your usb-storage device. However, the mount point is not important. Is hdb5 a NTFS or FAT32 partition? How big was the file.tar? From what you posted it should not corrupted your windows c: drive.

If you have the XP then you can try booting to recovery mode and try to repair.

hdb5 is FAT32
hdb5 - D: drive

file copied is 7GB
it copied about 2GB and - "space limit reached"

A FAT32 filesystem is limited to 2GB files.
It should not matter but see if deleting the file in linux does anything.

i deleted files in hda5 {D:} and tried again...
no result

Have you tried recovery mode via the install CD. Are you running XP?

win98 recovery CD?

And earlier in your first post you said:
You copied your Linux swap partition to your Windows installation? What am I missing here? That seems an odd thing to do.

type error...

point is that files from
[HTML]hda6 ( linux partition ) go to
hdb5 ( win partition )
[/HTML]
now win wont boot

OK. I guess it really doesn't matter what you copied over to hdb5 (Linux swap partition or whatever).

By chance, did you have some version of Windows installed on hdb5 also? I'm asking because if you did, and then installed Windows 2k or XP on hdb1, then this second Windows install (on hdb1) would have been dependant on hdb5 for some of it's boot files. You wipe out hdb5 as you evidently did, and Windows on hdb1 is screwed!

This is the way Windows does multibooting. The seperate Windows installations are not independent of each other.

From your earlier descriptions, I wouldn't think the above is your case. However, I can't come up with any other reason why wiping out your D: drive would have screwed your installation on C: as you report.

there is 1 win98 install on hdb - C: and D: (hdb1 and hdb5)

there are no messages ehwn booting ... "loading windows..."
what could be the reason?