restore MBR to use GRUB after OS rebuild
 

Greetings All,
I have an old Dell XPS R350 PC that used to dual boot Win98 and FC3. After updating virus definitions on the Win side, it will no longer boot Windows. I generally like linux better so it is not great loss. However, there are a few things I'd like to be able to on the Win side and an consequently considering throwing XP on the Windows partition. The problem is that I can't find a clear route to restoring the GRUB setup.

When I install Win XP, I fully expect it will overwrite the existing MBR, thus preventing me from booting my Linux side.

How do I restore the MBR so that GRUB will do its job after the Win install is done?

'Searched the tutorials and did a few searches on MBR and GRUB and such to no avail. If I've missed an obvious answer to this, sorry in advance.

Thanks

Put grub on a floppy, then install XP.

You can leave grub on the floppy and setup the config file to dual-boot, or you can install grub onto the mbr after windows is installed

Thanks for the response. The latter option is the one I want, 'install grub onto the mbr after windows is installed'. I am not a heavy duty sys-admin and don't play with this level of stuff much/often, so I'm scrounging for a procedure that will put my existing grub config back in place after the windows install.

Just boot the FC CD into rescue mode and reinstall grub - there may be an option to restore grub, else use grub-install from the command line.

Search here on LQ - must be at least a thread a week on this.