I have a laptop that was dual booted with openSUSE 10.1, and windows xp home... was using GRUB as boot manager.

To make a long story short... I was an idiot and deleted and merged the linux partitions back into windows and viola!! Cool new error message next time I boot my laptop telling me "invalid partition tables" I have used ERD '05 to no avail, I don't particularly want to rebuild windows (found the cd...just cant find the folder that has my activation key), even though all of my important docs are on the d: partion and I wont lose them if I rebuild it... any ideas?

Yes, this gets asked about all the time. Try searching for it.

It uses the windows CD not to reinstall, but just to fix the boot loader. Boot with the CD, and select repair. The command is something like FIXMBR, but don't quote me on that, as I haven't used XP in some years now. Searching for repair windows bootloader should point you in the right direction.

Peace,
JimBass

It is not clear what you have done...What do you mean by ??

This is NOT obvious:You need to get that data backed up before you do anything else.

two options:
Boot from Windows CD--rescue mode, and do "fixmbr"
Boot from a live CD Linux--eg Knoppix--and have a look at the partition tables, booting setup, etc.

If you have no way to get at the data by using something like a live CD, you can always mount the disk in another computer.

Yeah...

Boot your Windows CD, choose the Repair installation. Then at the DOS prompt, type FIXMBR then enter. It will give you some warning, type Y to clear the MBR. Then at the prompt type FIXBOOT, then enter. Another warning, Yes, then Exit to reboot.

IGF