Any XP installation CD will do.

Your problem wil be a lot easier to solve if you have a floppy drive.

wati is the comment "fixmbr" or "afaik fixmbr"
liquid_t thanks for you comments too

and
saikee, this guy is unbelivable, stay with a newb to fix a complex probem(make worst becasue i am a newb) for 3 day.

saikee, thank dude

i can boot with my USB drive.

You are welcome.

Everyone has been a newbie before. I started about 14 months ago. Just a couple of steps ahead of you.

i will try to find a copy of xp installation cd, and try step two.

do know if its possible to download a bootable software that supports fixmbr??

You will be better off using a XP or W2k installation.

The problem is that you need an iso file, burn it to a CD, boot the laptop with it and then fix the mbr.

Most of the assistance bootable disks is to create a floppy but you haven't got a drive.

i found this, will it work? i will use the "fdbootcd.iso" to make an boot cd

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-...ions/beta9sr1/

files are from

http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/

Yep, you are in luck.

Just tried it myself.

You download the iso, in Nero choose burn image, select the iso file, open and write.

Then load the CD

choose option 1, then press F5 and you should be in command prompt in drive A (simulated by the CD).

The fdisk program is in Freedos directory, so

cd \freedos
fdisk /mbr

Good luck

it worked, but it let me to my failed attemp to recover windows before i start to talk to you
so i cant get into windows

and i could not get back to suse, i did not have the password for recovery
(i tried every single user name and password but...)

any way thanks

any advice for what i should to next time i install suse, to avoid this problem?
should i use another distro?

thanks your all you time and advice

maybe i should wait for the next version of suse

Your partitions are safe as long as you don't re-partition and then reformat it.

You can get back your Suse any time with a Live CD (say a Slax, Ubuntu, Koppix, Mepis etc). Just boot one up, get into super user mode, make a temporary directory as a mounting point, mount device hda4 of your Suse on the temporary directory, change root to it and reinstall its boot loader in the MBR. Read the way I describe above to appreciate the instrcutions given below

mkdir /mnt/hda4
mount /dev/hda4 /mnt/hda4
chroot /mnt/hda4
grub-install /dev/hda

Your Suse on reboot will be back to the state before you used FreeDOS.

At this point you are actually inside Suse and typing startx at the terminal might just get you back into Suse's desktop.

You never lose a partition. You only haven't got the tools or instructions to get it back.

For Saikee, Ref your post here #6

The other Win's is Win XP'x system restore copy of XP (always stores the restore as a W98 file).
Usually about midpoint on the disk.

Also need to shut off the XP's Vertual Mem (VM) disk since it will cause problems during installation in particular repartition.

Also note that XP and GRUB look at disk geometry differently.

paul_e_t

Paul_e_t,

Thanks for the enlightment. I have suspected it could have something to do with the hidden backup. The trouble is that I always removed it because it got in my way. I never backup the system, only my personal data outside the system partition.

I take it this hidden partition can be removed without causing problem to the XP.

for Saiklee ur #58

I don't know what kind of problems could develop. Remember that XP can do a partial setback restore ( for lack of good words) where one can go back to a set time frame. Win XP may try to write these OS time slices and if there is not an available disk, I don't know what error checking will do since I and everyone else is not privy to the closed MS OS particulars.
I haven't had much luck with dual boot ever since SuSE 9.2 when I tried with my first SuSE/XP combination. Right now I am sereiously considering moving to Debian. I'll try my luck there for a bit.
The realities of the real world have placed MS Win's applications in a world wide useage situation. In order to communicate with others that are not as well versed with, or do not have, a Linux system working one is forced to write files to MS Word format in addition to the other popularly used applications. Those that say just use Linux are just not being real. Dual boot is a very needed requirement and could be a serious limitation of Linux if unable to put up, reliably, with XP's applications.
In any case, best of luck and I hope I've helped. Also if you discover something let everone know about it.
Standing by

Paul_e_t

Dual boot?

My Linux boot loader Grub boots 45+ system in the box. They all can be booted by a Grub floppy too. There is nothing easier than booting in Linux. From one XP to 45+ system in 14 months. I dug up dead DOS, Win3x and got hold of FreeBSD and Solaris for Linux to boot. Each system can be booted manually by 3 lines, same for all systems! How simple can it be?

You can create such a Grub floppy in Suse. For multi boot Grub needs a script file and it is /boot/grub.menu.lst in your own Suse.