The problem is that you didn't bother to uninstall grub first. I would think that grub would have that facillity. No one reads their docs/man pages

>>
It seems that i'm not alone with my problem.
>>

Yes, you are one of many (grin)

But ...

Have you got anything in your boot directory that looks like it might be a mbr backup ?

I can't say much on grub ... but if it was lilo you would have a 512 byte file called boot.0300 in your /boot directory which would be a copy of the whole mbr including the table as it was for the original install.

In lilo, to replace it it would just be "lilo -u" wahlah !

I would be very surprised if grub didn't do something similar, read through the man pages/docs with that in mind !.

If you find something that could be a candidate, it should have a date that corresponds to the original mdk install date.

Have a look at it in "hexedit" or an equivalent hexeditor. Look for the last two bytes in the file, they should be "55AA". The actual boot code will vary depending on the windows version that originally installed it. But it should contain a text string along the lines of
" Invalid partition table. Error loading operating system. Missing operating system........"

If so ... you have found it, from there just do ... as "root"

]# dd if=<found-file> of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1

Only copy the first 446 bytes back or you will screw up your existing partition table.

Don't reinstall XP straight away though, try the suggestion in the other post above, ie; use the recovery facility of your windows install cd. Mount it and look see what it has available. Go to a computer shop in town and ask someone if they have a spare startup disk with fdisk for windows on it. Offer to pay for the floppy. Best to go for a small struggling shop though, rather than a large trendy one. The smaller ones are more likely to understand, or have the time to

Can you mount your windows from a LiveCD ???

If so, can you navigate to the C:/windows/command directory or its equiv ??? there should be a "fdisk" there. But then you need to get it on a bootable dos startup floppy ?

Good Luck.


jm