LinuxQuestions.org - Help with reinstallation of Windows XP on dual boot Compaq Presario with Suse 9.3

My question is this...

I have a dual boot Compaq Presario desktop with Windows XP Home and Suse 9.3 Professional. The hard drive is partitioned with Windows (a C drive and a D drive) and then Linux (the Linux main partition and the swap partition). This was the default partitioning that YAST set up on install.

It is getting close to time to re-install Windows (an unfortunate event that has to happen every year or so because of the relative instability of Windows.) Unfortunately, I cannot just kill Windows and make Suse my main PC, as there are a few apps and games that my son and wife need. (I also have another box running Ubuntu).

I have experience with this on the box that I am currently running Ubuntu on. That box used to be a dual boot with Windows ME and Suse 9.1 personal. When I needed to reinstall ME, I put in the restore disk that came with the CD and booted up the computer. This was/is an E-Machines (don't remember the model number off hand). The restore CD was actually Norton Ghost (don't remember version) but it had an image of the OS the way it came out of the box. When the reinstall was complete, I noticed that my original MBR had been restored. I then booted into Windows ME and noticed that the C drive was showing that all of my hard drive space was occupied by Windows. It was a 12GB hard drive. When before with the dual boot the hard drive was roughly spit in half between the two OS's.

The Compaq box in question uses a different restoration program (of which I have used before I went dual boot.) It is basically a "recovery cd". As I mentioned before, my hard drive is split (on the Windows side) into a C drive and a D drive. The C is roughly 16GB and is formatted as NTFS (it's what XP actually uses) and the D is roughly 5GB and contains the files necessary for the install of Windows XP (as imaged from the factory from Compaq). This D drive is formatted as FAT32. When you use the restoration CD, the CD basically allows you to do a "destructive" recovery, which reformats C with NTFS and installs Windows fresh. The CD pulls data from those files on the D drive.

With the reformatting for the Windows partitioned explained, does anyone know what will happen with the re-install now that I am dual boot. Will the reformatting of Windows wipe the whole drive (including the other 16GB formatted with Linux) clean and only leave Windows? Or, will my partioning remian as is?

Thank you in advance for any help or information you can offer. I would really not want to re-install Linux too, just because Windows needed to be re-installed.

Regards,

sbest23