ereeno, confirm the recovery methods work and you are familar with them before doing the reinstall.

You could choose to hide the Linux partions altogether when you reinstall XP if you get your hands on GDISK from Norton.

But be careful about using gdisk to delete any partions - lost my boot with it once. Luckily though the data survived :-)

Hide - install - unhide

Then XP shouldn't be aware of the partions and you simply answer no if the XP install asks about utilizing "remaining" space.

CAUTION - BACK UP ANY IMPORTANT DATA YOU MIGHT HAVE FIRST !!!

It turns out i had some form of the MBLAST worm on my computer. It gave me a file called DLLHOST.EXE in C:\WINDOWS\system32\wins\, (a phony impostor of the real dllhost.exe in C:\WINDOWS\system32\)

I had to take steps to delete the registry entries and that file. There was also one called SVCHOST.EXE in the same folder.

I guess this is why people switch to linux

I'm still tempted to do the reinstall, depending on some issues with the .NET framework i may have to. But before I do that i'll try my best to configure it so i dont have to reinstall, and i'll back everything important up as well!

Thanks everyone for all the help!

This is all incredibly useful advice everyone. It's certainly helped me, But maybe I should think of keeping windows and Linux completely separate on different hard drives! I have read that some users prefer to do this and swap the hard drives over using a 'caddy'. Sounds sensible.
Great advice.
Mike

Don't drop the caddy or let it slide off the table. Experience speaking here and I lost a 40 gig drive......

The only way out is to have complete backups of your data i.e. /home /var /opt + full backups of your data from Windows + boot floppy/rescue disk and so forth.

XP will trash everything on the drive by formatting it.

What do you need in Windows, that cannot be done in Linux?

I also thought I could not do without Adobe Photoshop - I tell you what The Gimp is just as good and that is one good example.

Another excelent way of having the cake and eating it?

Knoppix. If you have a fast CD. Reinstall XP, run Knoppix from the CD with a new partition created for a Knoppix Persistant /home, great idea Linux running from a read-only CD, with your Linux data on the hard-drive on a seperate partition or even on a second hard disk out of the way of windows completely that way!

The thing i need in windows is to learn how to program windows! (I am a student)

Otherwise i'm sure i'd be more than happy using linux full time

Tell your instructor that there is a better operating system.....

Actually he knows that, and agrees that linux is far superior. But the reality is that if i plan on bringing home a paycheck it will probably be from working with windows as opposed to linux. No matter how much i'd like it to be otherwise....

I recently had to do this due to someone trying to load BootMagic on my Win98/XP/Linux box. He was trying to "Help" me.

I couldn't find my linux boot disk so I used the rescue mode on the Installation CD. If you can still boot to Linux, I'd make a boot disk first. and copy down your /etc/lilo.conf file in case you have to re-create it. Then reinstall XP. As long as the /boot partition and the /etc/lilo.conf file is not corrupted, you should be OK. It appeared when I reinstalled XP that the Linux partitions were recognized as unknown, and XP stayed away from them. XP, it seems, simply refuses to recognize that Linux exists.

I just reinstalled XP to it's original partition, booted to the linux boot disk I made, logged in as root, typed lilo <Enter>, and rebooted.

LILO reinstalled itself and I could boot to all three OS versions.

RD

Hmmm, dropping the caddy. Another good point.

Maybe it would be safer to have both drives installed in the case!

So could I put Linux on one of the hard-drives and windows on the other one, and with them connected to the same IDE cable, (the one with Linux on as master and the one with windows on as slave for example), would it be possible to boot to either Linux or windows??

Thanks again in advance for your assistance.

Mike

(Oh-PS, to qualify, I need to use windows sometimes to do some over the net learning which runs a windows programme. Other than that Linux is much better with Mozilla Browser&Mail being excellent.) Thanks again.

Windows sort of insists upon being master in my experience. It has pitched hissy fits and wanted to format my drives.

You would probably be better off putting "the picky My way or the Highway OS" on the first primary partition on the first drive in the first IDE plug.

Thanks Fancypiper.

So I'll put the 'My Way or The Hiway' OS onto the primary partition on HDD1 (I intend to have 2 partitions on this hard drive, C: and D

Now, I have only limited experience, so sorry if I sound thick, but I assume that, if I were starting from scratch:-

I could then partition and format HDD2 to accept Linux and connect it to to the same IDE cable, as the slave. I am then hoping that it will be as simple as putting in the Linux install CD and that I will be able to point the installer at the intended partition on HDD2.

Once installed I am also assuming that the bootloader will point ME straight back to Linux on HDD2 when I switch on the computer! Or am I being simple??

Thanks for your help. Mike

You should have no problems (Caution: I have no experience with Windows XP or your computer) that I can see.

Of course, make a boot floppy for Mandrake during the install just in case you have lilo problems and need to remove it to get to Windows for some reason.

You can remove lilo from the mbr with:
/sbin/lilo -u

To make life easier and Linux more fun, you should install mc, the kernel and software developmental packages and anything else that looks interesting. Do the expert install and take your time browsing the stuff available.

Some bookmarks for you.
# Mandrake links
Mandrake home page
Mandrake Users website
Easy urpmi config for Mandrake
urpmi mini-HOWTO
Easy software management: Red Carpet
Maximum RPM
rpmfind
You didn't install the developmental packages? As root, command:
urpmi gcc
An Introduction to the Midnight Commander. You can install it by commanding:
urpmi mc
Midnight Commander home page

well,I know you have installed windows and linux on your computer in diffrient partition.in addition,you intalled linux first and windows secend.so the windows intallation has broken the boot loader.the thing which you need and must do is repair the boot loader.the following is the method:

if your boot loader is GRUB:
go into the resure mode by linux cd1,then type this command
grub-reintall /dev/hda

if your boot loader is LILO:
go into the resure mode by linux cd1,then type this command
lilo

well,your system is ok now on your demand.