I thought exactly the same as you. I was NOT going to reinstall Winblows and I didn't see how the data could be gone from frying the partition table.

But I did get a little sick when I couldn't find a way to create an MBR. I looked all over the place. ultimatebootcd.com had some stuff (i have no idea if it would build an MBR) but even though they talked about ISO images all the downloads were .exe (not going to help if you have no windows/dos machine) and zip (which I also couldn't get to work in linux, does linux support .zip? or maybe the download was corrupt) The packaging of that download could be improved a lot...all we need is a stinkin' ISO image.

Somebody who understands this should write a tool for linux. It's one of the very few circle-jerks left in the dual-boot or winblows-->linux migration path:

You can't fix the MBR without a windows or dos boot disk, and if you don't have a floppy (= most modern machines) and you lost your winblows partition, you can't create a boot disk anyway, even if you did have a floppy.

This should be added to the linux tool sets (if not already there).

Thanks!
Randux

TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/index.html?testdisk.html

I've never had to use it, but I know it's on my Knoppix CD. Along with gpart. I'd rather have backups than try to build from scratch though. That being said, nothing builds your confidence like building/repairing your MBR from scratch.

bloody hell, i've been getting emails from this post all day. just reviewing things. Hope i didnt cause your (temporary) downfall...

well, the old dd was what i was going to suggest but i was in working on somethign all day with a consultant.

interesting post though :-)

whoops. double post

Not at all, man, thanks. What happened was when I first powered up Slax (which is a GREAT live CD, btw) I decided to just go with the command line. But once stuff rolls off the screen, it's gone. I had a long list of partition type values, and I couldn't see the ones I wanted. So I decided to issue the L command again, to list them. And I hit control-S since I remembered that back in the day, this would suspend output, you could read what you want, and then hit control-O to resume output. I don't know what happened, but the system locked up. I hit a few keys, and I couldn't get it to move- everything was frozen. The next thing I know, I'm getting a message that the updates are being written to disk. %*^&!!! I powered off the machine hoping that I would catch it before the changes got committed, but it was too late. The partition table was toast.

I did learn a few interesting things in the past couple of days while getting set up for this project:

* It's nearly friggin impossible to find a way to fix the MBR from linux. I thought about setting up the partitions like I wanted and just installing Slackware and then letting it set up lilo to dual boot. But I didn't like the mismatch on the block numbers and I decided not to do anything until everything was sano.

* You guys are a good resource and I really appreciate it. Not everybody has all the answers, but at least I didn't feel like nobody gave a ^&(* which can make things feel worse than they are. Big THANK YOU to haertig for hangin in.

* You can chicken-fry the partition table all you want, and you can also get everything back again, if you don't touch your data. Contrary to conventional opinion, the MBR is not modified by nailing the partition table. It may get lost, but it can also get found.

* Having a tool like qtparted around and linux LiveCDs takes away almost every reason people were afraid to try dual booting. In the old days if I lost my MBR my system was toast unless I planned ahead big-time. And planning ahead is sometimes impossible until you screw up enough times to know what you need. If I didn't have a liveCD distro there would be no way for me to get online and do research.

* Having skinny distros like Slax that boot to ram in 256M (and damnsmalllinux in 50M!!!) and run like scalded cats should make anyone with half a brain in his head ask himself WTF are Billy-Bob Gatesmesiter and the Redmond Rainbow Coalition doing jamming bloated malware down everybodys' throats as must-haves. We actually have the honor of paying for this ^&(* when we buy a new machine and 99 times out of a hundred we don't even get a friggin disk. What kind of deal is that? Linux is free, babies, and it rocks. And the more people will use it, the more user-friendly it can become (which it's also flexible enough to still be hot-roddable and kept skinny by those who know) until the tyranny ends. There is absolutely no ^*!@&#^ excuse for the resource consumption of Windows except if they will admit that it's all about consuming HD space and bandwidth and gathering marketing information (or worse.)

* I think the linux community has to be more vigilant about garbage like firebox and some of the other windows apps being just dragged over from Winbloze. Surprise! All the stuff we hated about the way that stuff works on Winbloze works pretty much the same hateful way on linux. It's nice to have good GUIs. But it's even nicer NOT to try to clone stuff that nobody was happy with anyway. Kongkeror isn't a whole lot better. The way it comes out of the box on most distros is a marketer's dream- cookies automatically baking in the oven, browser headers being broadcast in all their glory. I haven't checked the other windowing apps but they can't be a whole lot better. Come on guys, if we don't watch it, linux can wind up as a port of exactly what we want to avoid. I understand that the guys working on the kernel and core utilities and most or all of the distros are not the ones cloning this crap. But the guys packaging distros also have to be careful not to include stuff like that or it can come back to haunt us.

*rant off