I had my system set up perfectly, dual-booting SuSe 9.1 and Windows XP, until I decided to create another partition via Partition Magic 8 in Windows (i know, I'm an idiot) that was FAT, so I could share files between Suse and windows. When I rebooted afterwards, it went straight to the GRUB console, looking like this:

GNU GRUB version .94 (system info, blah blah)

grub>

yyeah. oops. So I freak out, worried I deleted my partition table. I start frantically searching for how to use this console online and come across a guide on how to use the setup (hd0, etc) and root commands. YAY. problem solved.

nope. Doing my usual frantic idiocy, I plugged in what I thought was the right commands to put everything back to normal. When I reboot, I get the GRUB menu again (except minus the graphics, press any key to continue) so I try Linux: Partition does not exist. Windows... right back to the grub menu.

Again, my next step in idiocy: Throw in Mandrake 10 and install that. I erase the SuSe partitions and have a giant sigh of relief when I can navigate to /mnt/windows-c and /mnt/windows-d. Joy. Bliss. (Let me clarify that I have two partitions for windows, one (60GB) for program files and another (100+GB) for files, with another 15 or so GB for linux). Partition D, the important one w/ all my irreplacable date, is still totally navigable. Go to C... 0 files, 0 folders. <insert profanity here>.

reboot. mandrake starts up fine. reboot, select windows in Lilo. i get a GRUB menu?!?!? CONCLUSION: during frantic idiocy #1, using setup(hd0) etc in the GRUB menu, I somehow installed grub on my NTFS windows partition #1, where windows is actually installed. So, that brings me to my question:

can I delete this so that windows boots up normally? If not, is there any way for me to get in there via linux and get the few files I need out? And if not, is there a safe way to reformat just that partition so that I don't lose my big NTFS storage partition?

Thanks a lot in advance for anyone that pities me enough to offer aid...


EDIT: just ran the recovery console via the winXP setup cd. a "dir" command on drive C: produces "An error occurred during directory enumeration."

I'm pretty much convinced that everything on that partition's gone... am I correct in this assumption?

bump

there four commands you can use

1)
to check the consistency of your file system use
chkdsk c: /P

2)
to check you partitions if there is a working windows installation
bootcfg /rebuild

3)
to create a new bootsector
fixboot

4)
creeate a new master boot record
fixmbr

full discribtion can be found at

http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm

thanks a lot... I'll try it when I get home... i did try chckdisk from there, and it said something along the lines of "this drive has suffered one or more irrecoverable errors." Yay.

My main issue right now isn't having to reformat the partition, I guess... that's not a problem. There are just a few real important files that i'd really like to get out, if I could... does anyone know any good data recovery software I can run from linux to somehow get the files off?

i know caps are frowned upon, but THANK YOU SO MUCH. Got everything running again i've never had a problem that i coudln't fix thanks to help on this forum... oh what the world would be without the internet...

thanks again dude