I have an OSS 11.3/WinXPPro dual boot system. Unfortunately, Windows is a mess because of a botched restoration. I guess I need to start again from scratch. I assume if I attempt to reinstall Windoze that the whole dual boot system is going to get botched up anyway.

I would like to know what would be the best approach since I am going to start by installing Windoze to the HD. Here is a readout of what I currently have from gparted:

Partition / File Sys / Mount Point / Flags

/dev/sda1 ntfs /media/sda1
/dev/sda2 extended boot,lba
/dev/sda5 linux-swap
/dev/sda6 ext4 /media/sda6
/dev/sda7 ext4 /media/sda7
unallocated unallocated

Gparted gives me several choices of formatting or deleting. Common sense tells me to reformat all those linux partitions to ntfs, BUT common sense failed me when I attempted to restore all my settings in Windows.

Please let me know what is the best approach. Thanks in advance.

Make sure you backup everything as you are going to lose it all as windoze thinks it is the ONLY OS in the world and it will delete Linux before loading .

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Just create the needed partition(s) for windows, and for linux.
Install windows on the ntfs partition you created, then install linux on the other partition(s)
Linux will install a bootloader in the MBR, so you can dual boot.
Make sure to install windows first,then linux since windows will overwrite the MBR.
If you only want to reinstall windows, after installation you need to run the bootloader (grub or lilo) from a live CD in order to dualboot again.

Windows will only delete linux if you tell it to do so.
If linux has his own partition, it will not be deleted.
It will however overwrite the MBR.

Kind regards

You don't really need to reinstall linux in order to reinstall windows. When installed, windows would rewrite master boot record (MBR — first 512 bytes of hard disc).
In order to restore grub you should copy MBR with dd if=/dev/sda of=<some easy accessible file> bs=512 count=1 command. Then you can reinstall windows, as usual. After that you should boot your computer from live-cd, and restore MBR with dd if=<some easy accessible file> of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1. Magic!

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Thanks everyone for your replies. I am hoping for answers more specific as to how I should work these partitions:

Partition / File Sys / Mount Point / Flags

/dev/sda1 ntfs /media/sda1
/dev/sda2 extended boot,lba
/dev/sda5 linux-swap
/dev/sda6 ext4 /media/sda6
/dev/sda7 ext4 /media/sda7
unallocated unallocated

I'm not worried about losing any info on this HD because I'm just now trying trying to set it up. Although OSS 11.3 is perfect, WinXP is an utter mess; this happened because I restored wrong.

Only last night, I discovered that windoze has a file transfer wizard and there are certain protocols I have to follow. The way windoze is now it's complete garbage, so reinstalling would only rehash the garbage.

I want to start fresh again, so I would like to know: Do I delete the above partitions? Thanks for your help!

Is there a resource that tells me how to use gparted to safely wipe my HD, so I can reinstall a dual boot system again? Thanks in advance.

The above is a quote from your first post. What would you hope to accomplish by doing that? Linux won't work on an ntfs partition.

If you have no data on the computer you want to save, just install windows and then Opensuse. If your Opensuse is working, you could just re-install windows to sda1. Or you could use GParted and delete the partitions, create new ones and format and install.

If you have no data to save, I'm not sure what you mean by 'safely wipe my HD'?

I've read stories from others who haphhazardly deleted partitions only to discover that less space was available on their HD from their 1st use.

I discovered devices > create partition on gparted. That's exactly what I need w/o too much trouble.

Windoze is going to take hours to reinstall anyway. I figured why not just start fresh? OSS 11.3 takes almost no time to install with no trouble in comparison.

If you do a clean Windows installation it will use the partition you choose in the installer. This partition will be formatted before the install, so there will not be any type of "rehashing". Maybe you confuse that with an repair-installation.
If your openSuse install is perfect, as you stated, why would you want to reinstall it. You do not need to do that, just install Windows to the same partition you did it the first time and make sure to format that partition. Be sure to use the commands given by Samotnik to save and restore your bootloader, and by all means, if you have valuable data, be sure to back it up.

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You guys have been really helpful. I need a few pointers on using the console commands. I figure that I will have to copy MBR to a flash drive because the live-CD does not access the HDs. Can someone please provide the syntax for:

dd if=/dev/sda of=<some easy accessible file> bs=512 count=1

I mean, what does the path to the file look like on a flash drive?

Thanks in advance.