Hello guys/girls, I have a problem. I have a virus on the windows partition that i can't get rid of. I was hit with a hack that deleted all of my Norton Antivirus .exe files. Even reinstalling the app didn't do much. Also, every now and then, I get a pop-up error that says "Norton Desktop Proxy failed to start." I NEVER saw that message before. So, I am deciding to do a full system restore on the windows side tonight. But the thing is, I am running Mandrake Linux 10.0 on the other side of the partition. I don't want to accidentally erase my Linux partiiton by doing a restore on the windows side. My question is, can I do a reformat (complete from disk) on the windows side without harming the linux side? Any help is greatly appreciated.

It depends... is this the disk that came with the computer? Is so, then maybe. If you bought the copy of windows you could surely save the Linux side.

Just remember to reinstall the boot blocks so you can boot into it after windows erases them during the install.

Yes, HP sent me these disks as they wern't included with the HP753n computer package. Windoze XP came preinstalled on my comp. But I don't understand what you mean by "blocks" and such. Please, I am a newbie and all of this stuff is very new to me. Can you explain the process in Laymen's terms please?

That disk may give you the option to select which partition to format and install on. If that is the case, then you just pick the old windows one and the Linux ones will be fine. If the disk just assumes you want to use the whole disk it might wipe out the linux partitions. This second behavior is rare but I have seen it. In all likelyhood you should be fine.

When windows reinstalls it is going to put its bootloader at the front of the disk. This will copy over LILO and the computer will automatically boot to windows without asking if you want to boot linux. You need to use the boot CD for linux -- after installing window and making sure it works -- to reinstall LILO (or whatever bootloader you have) at the start of the disk.

I would back up all my files if i were you d00d, wouldn't want to risk losing anything important

frob and geek no freinds, thanx guys, will do and let you know how it worked.

As Geek No Friends says back up first, than you should be able to install Xp again no worries, it's installer does (at least last time I installed it, it did) allow you to chose which partition to install on, the only issue is it most likely will ruin your boot loader, so that will need to be reinstalled/reset, as to how thats done I'm not really sure, perhaps someone with experience that reads this could enlighten us, if not make a second post on that.