Reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

[V P]

On 6/1/05, sid <sid at winoble.com> wrote:
> I have Windows Xp prof and Fedora 3 installed on my laptop. I need to reinstall my windows xp cos
> its showing its native behaviour..like system hang.. Now i read that if I reinstall windows..it will
> overwrite my current boot loader(GRUB)..and then i will not be able to boot linux. Is there a way to
> do it without losing my linux installation??

ReInstalling windows will no doubt overwrite your grub, but it will
not destroy your FC installation. There are two ways out of this
problem.

1. Once the installation of WinXP is complete, boot with Disk 1 of FC
into the rescue shell, chroot to the installation and run

     $ grub-install /dev/hdX

replace X as applicable.


2. Before installing WinXP boot into your FC installation and as root
run the command

     $ dd if=/dev/hdXX of=bootsect.bin bs=512 count-1

/dev/hdXX would be your /boot partition (or / if you don't have a
separate boot). This will generate a file (bootsect.bin) of size
512KB. Save the file to a floppy. Once the installation of WinXP is
complete, copy the file to c:\ and edit c:\boot.ini as follows.

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
c:\bootsect.lin="Fedora Core"


Hope this helps.

VJP

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