my bootloader ?

I have 3 hd's...xp on one, suse11.4 on 2nd drive...and backup on 3rd...I built this system when xp first came out...10-12yrs ago...I have somehow damaged the xp drive while I was "cleaning" the drive and now xp wont boot correctly...I have tried 3 months of suggestions to repair-fix the xp drive and no joy...the last thing I could think of was to repair the Windows directory...which I believe is an option via the OEM disk that will restore all the original files of the initial install of xp...but I worry this will destroy the MBR and I wont be able to access the www via linux...is this true ? Thanks for your thoughts-ideas

it mite repair the mbr so that it will boot windows only. if that happens i would boot to a live usb and re-install grub to the mbr.

I dont have enough knowledge to do that....I think at one time I used a live linux cd-dvd (opensuse) to restore the bootloader...but I dont have a good feeling doing that...thanks for your input

Can you tell us what you did exactly when you "cleaned" the drive?
I'm 100% sure you didn't mean wiping it with a Kleenex?

If you tell us what you did, then we might easier spot what went wrong.

Let's say you changed a partition on the drive with fdisk, cfdisk, parted or something like that, then one can say it is fairly easy to accidentally remove boot flag, or "deactivate" the win OS partition, or be the victim of a partition software that did something freaky with the partition boundaries. Just as an example.

There are so many oh's and but's when it comes to fdisk, partitions, UUIDs, disklabels, BIOS and booting that i get goose bumps thinking of it.


General advice about dual booting windows and linux: Before installing linux on the windows machine, make sure the MBR used by windows is a "general MBR" that just redirects booting to a boot sector on the actual partition holding the windows OS. Also one must be sure of which disk (if there is more than one in the system) the system is booting from. It is possible to boot from one disk, and then install linux which finds out that disk is not first choice for BIOS to boot from, and then install GRUB (or whatever boot loader) on that other disk.

To remedy a dual boot problem, best is to isloate the problem. Do this by resetting the system as much back to when it was only booting windows. AND make image backups of the disks! Then it is relatively easy to repair the windows booting. Then when that is fixed, one can reinstall the linux bootloader for dualbooting.
As long as the windows install is set up for a general MBR and with a boot sector in the windows OS partition, it is quite safe to tinker with GRUB in a MBR.

One other thing: XP on NTFS once put a copy of the partition boot sector just after the windows system partition.
If that gets overwritten, then the windoze wont boot. (And repairing using "windoze style" might damage the other partition).

Not sure if they fixed that... yet ...but i always quarantine my windows partitions with a couple of disk cylinders margin to the other partitions.

this is a month old thread so ....
this might have been fixed

a word of warning
if this is XP service pack 2 install disk
and you did a ubdate on the old system
Microsoft a while back did a "stealth" update of "windows update"

this means that if you try to reset to factory settings ( using the install disk )
you will NEVER, NEVER ever be able to run windows update ever again .

the "stealth" update is 100% incompatible with what is on the install disk

you only have one option
a fresh new install

If you want to run windoze and linux I found linux and windows in virtualbox etc the best option. You can use it when you need that way without rebooting. Of late I have found that wine can run the few free windows application I have to use because there is no os alternative. However a machine upgrade includes windows 7 so I may well install it because I have it. Not used virtual box for a long time so not sure where it is at now but it's very very convenient.

I assume you can get at your xp files from linux. If so the best option would be to copy what you need and then reinstall. For keeping data and files etc I have found a usb docking station rather useful. Red and black with a card reader on the front that takes all sorts, disc drops into the top. It busted after 2 years but they are cheap and it broke after my PC power supply had gone nuts. I was surprised that 100gb or so didn't take all that long to copy across. From memory Virtualbox etc needs what intel called virtualisation so best check on that aspect before trying to use it. It's equally possible to run linux on a windows system like that. Once you have booted a system in that moving a mouse over either system's windows works with it. It boots them a lot quicker than a hardware boot too.

John
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