Hi There:

I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 and loving it since it came out. I upgraded from 9.04. Linux is my lifestyle operating system and I use it almost exclusively! The one and only thing I can't yet do on Linux that I can do on MS is stream my Netflix movies. This is a big issue for me. I have my 500GB hdd partitioned 280GB/ext4 and 220GB/fat32 to avoid confusion. I tried to install W XP on the 220GB fat32 partition. W XP said it was unable to install to that fat32 partition. I deleted the partition(per typical MS crap); and tried again with no luck. So, I went back into BIOS and changed the boot order back to my hdd 1st and tried to boot my original Linux installation, but GRUB won't even show up; I just get an "error loading OS"message. I guess MS wrote over the boot partition? Could someone please advise me on how I should proceed from here to restore GRUB? I am very new to this, so please be specific about the process if you care to help me out :-) I love Linux so much I even got my wife to change over, so this is something I need to learn how to recover from. Thanks in advance for your assistance.

Yes, Windows seeks out and destroys any other bootloader when you try to install it. The easiest way to restore grub is to burn a copy (as an image) of Super Grub Disk and run it. It has an auto fix feature. http://prdownload.berlios.de/supergr...isk_0.9799.iso If you have the ability to deal with bz2 files, then use this one: http://prdownload.berlios.de/supergr...0.9799.iso.bz2 - Bunzip it and then burn it as an image.

As to trying to dual boot Windows on your PC, did you tell the Windows installer to go ahead and reformat that partition? Now's the time to mess with it if you want, because if you try again in the future, it's going to zap your grub yet again. It's almost always best to get Windows running, before installing Linux. But, you can usually get it running and then use SGD to fix up grub if you've already got Linux installed.

quakeboy has you on the right path for grub, I would just point out that Win XP and beyond all use NTFS
hence why FAT32 got the arse when you asked it too.

Thanks a $mil to you both; your replies really clarified it for me. I've burned the SGD and will keep it handy, just in case! I've been bugging Netflix for months(along with many, many others) to get Linux streaming up. Thanks Again!

Glad the issue is sorted, don't forget to mark as SOLVED.