All, I've finally got a working Windows XP again and no data loss on the NTFS data partitions, though it was done with a fresh re-install of Windows XP. During the installation of XP apparently the MBR was rewritten again, this time with the result that GRUB no longer works. Somebody mentioned that possibility earlier, though I didn't listen as I thought that since GRUB is written on the /boot partition and not on the MBR, it shouldn't be affected. Also, from what I've read (or the way I got it), Linux doesn't give a fork about the given CHS/LBA disk geometry and therefor shouldn't be as vulnerable to inconsistency as WinXP apparently is. Anyway. What happens when I try to boot GRUB is that GRUB loads but halts with its command prompt. No menu anymore, though all kernel and conf files seem to be in place when I mount the /boot partition from a linux CD boot. I recalled the rows from the grub.conf and manually typed root(hd0,0) chainloader +1 and boot to get back into Windows XP again so it seems like GRUB is working although it doesn't find the confs for some reason. I've googled for this strange problem, but all results I find on the topic is about getting XP booting. Didn't find anything appropriate in the Bugzilla or FAQ and the man page didn't give me any clues neither. Yours Mkn. PS. I got infected with the non booting WinXP after installing Fedora Core 2 and the published LBA/sfdisk fix didn't work. Got a bit nervous there as I've got OS and NTFS data partitions on the same disk and really really really didn't want to loose the ~80-100 gigs of raw video and audio work as the result of a defect partition table. ... Yes, mom. Time to learn about back up routines. ;)
