Okay, here's my situation:

After a long, arduous process, I finally got Mandrake Linux running A-Okay with speedy internet functionality, pumping MP3s, etc, etc. I had windows on my C partition, a 5 gig backup on D, and Mandrake on its own 10 gig or so partition, all living happily ever after.. Until..

A few months later, I decide windows has too much stuff clogging up its partition. I format C and reinstall Windows (98 SE, btw). Now the boot menu doesn't come up anymore, instead it automatically boots to windows. Linux is still sitting on my hard drive, but I can't access it!

What's the easiest and least painful way to rectify this situation? Thanks.

-Seyon

Your Win98 reinstall overwrote the Linux bootloader's information on the Master Boot Record of your drive. Boot Linux from a floppy and rerun Lilo or Grub (whichever you were using). For Lilo, if /etc/lilo.conf is still intact all you should have to do is run /sbin/lilo. I haven't had much experience with Grub, but I think you may need to pass it a command-line option to force a reinstall.

The only thing that's missing is your boot loader. It was replaced nby the windows installer. You can use fdisk /mbr from windows to fix it (eg, Replace current mbr with backup copy on sector 2), or boot from mandrake cdrom and reinstall lilo