Hi
i had installed Xp and then installed SUSE 9.1 along with Fedora core 3 , the last one being core3 . I had to reinstall xp later due to blue screen of death . I reinstalled the grub at /dev/hda1 my primary partition . The xp isnt booting ...! what should i do ??
Thnx for your suggestions in advance

Show the lines from /etc/fstab that relate to: xp, suse, and fc3.

If you had xp installed in /dev/hda1, it's hosed by installing grub to /dev/hda1 instead of writing to the MBR, and the /boot/grub folder of either suse or fc3.

In other words, if xp is in /dev/hda1 (the first partition of the first hard disk), you overwrote part of xp. Now you will have to reinstall xp.

Choose either suse or fc to be the host (master) install of grub. Boot into that OS and install grub to the MBR (after reinstalling xp: make a boot disk for suse or fc to boot with because xp will write to the MBR, or boot from install cd).

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80060424192 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9733 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1275 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS --- XP
/dev/hda2 1276 9733 67938885 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 1276 3389 16980673+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda6 3390 5503 16980673+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda7 5504 7617 16980673+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda8 7618 8382 6144831 b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda9 8383 8394 96358+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda10 8395 8406 96358+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda11 8407 8469 506016 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda12 8470 9096 5036346 83 Linux --Root core3
/dev/hda13 9097 9733 5116671 83 Linux --Root SUSE

i installed Xp and then gave the command :rescue linux and then installed grub with the command
:grub-install /dev/hda1
there gotto be a way to rewrite mbr to get back Xp and the orignal setting hope you cam fogure that out for me
thanx for your response !!

As I pointed out before, you installed grub to /dev/hda1, which is windows partition, not MBR. XP is now non-bootable. You have no choice but to re-install.

To install grub correctly, install to /dev/hda [without the number: tells grub to write to the MBR. If you say /dev/hda1, it writes to the first partition, not the MBR]

(or, using the grub commands, tell grub where the root of the filesystem is: root (hd0,11) [which is your fc3] or root (hd0,12) [which is your suse], followed by setup (hd0) [tells grub to write to the MBR].

Thnx for the back up !! well guess i will have to go back to to the drawing tables !! will keep your point in mind thanx again !