hi,
i have stuck with a strange problem. i successfully installed win 98 and linux on my system and for some reasons installed win xp again and to my surprise, i could not find the linux OS.
so i formated whole of my disk and re-installed win xp and tried to install linux.
it gives me a strange problem--
hda..
lost interrupt ..
and gets stuck up
please help me in this and it is really urgent.

Well, Windows tries allways to overtook the harddisk...

Can you boot from cd and have a look on the partition table (as root "fdisk -l /dev/hda") ?

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-Newbie and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Windows (all recent versions) always overwrites the MBR when it's installed, your Linux install would have still been there after the install of XP, you were just unable to boot it because of the MBR hijack - the correct way to rectify this problem is to boot with a Linux rescue disk (every major distro includes files on the first install CD that enables you to use it as a rescue disk) and reinstall your linux boot loader, either grub or lilo, and configure it to boot both Operating Systems.
By formatting the entire drive your Linux install is now gone, and installing XP without creating both Windows and Linux partitions first means that XP has taken the entire drive as it's "C" drive, you'll need to shrink that partition to make room for Linux with a tool such as Partition Magic or Acronis Partition Expert.

Another way is to backup the MBR after you install linux, put it on a floppy, then when you have installed windows just copy the mbr file to the C:\ drive, add an entry to C:\boot.ini referencing the file, then use ntldr to boot grub/lilo.

For instructions, search the forums.

winxp overwrites the bootloader. thats why u cudnt load linux after installing winxp. try to install the bootloader again if u didnt formatted linux partition. if not install linux again to a seperatge partition and instal and edit bootlodaer to run both os. u can cr8 a partition to linux while installing linux. don't worry b happy.