linux beginner question

Hi all..
Im a new user of linux and so of this forum..
I've installed RedHat 9 on my PC few weeks ago. Later I need to boot my computer from a Windows XP CD. After doing so, the linuix boot loader just disappeared, and was unable to enter linux expect when using a complicated way ( booting from suse CD and beginning a new installation ... then stopping installation after two or one step. then the installer will give you the option of booting to linux redhat... :o ) ...
Even after installing a newer version of linux (Fedora 2) and after selecting new boot loader settings NOTHING was changed !!!

How can I use Linux again ??? :confused:

Sounds like windows wrote over your master boot record as it usually does when installed second on a dual boot system. What i would do if i were you is log in using the recovery console and reload (boot loader of choice here). Another option would be to edit the boot file in windows for more than one os. You should be able to find examples of this on google. Here is a decent guide to start with. http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html
Hope this helps.

If you want to use the windows boot loader, then follow these instructions

http://www.enterprisedt.com/publications/dual_boot.html

If you want to use a linux boot loader, such as grub, then use these instructions

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html

Thank you all...
Ill try this and tell you the result soon.

phish! How could you forget that I wrote a tut on that a while back? /me is hurt :p. Anyway, if you want to use the Windows XP bootloader, take a look at this thread http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=241021 . If you want to continue using whatever bootloader came with your Linux system, just boot into Linux using whatever way you're using now, and run /sbin/lilo or /sbin/grub depending on what bootloader you have. Remember to run them as root though.

Cheers,
cgkanchi

Ok
thank u all....
all ur answers r good solutions ...

Now a more complicated problem occyred when my younger brother read one of the tutorials :)
he deleted the file bootsect.dos from the root directory of windows
how can i recover it...
Plz dont tell me to format :D

What you need to do is get the bootsect.dos file back. One way of doing this is to use dd. Either use Linux or get a windows port of dd from somewhere. Then type:

dd if=MyWindows98Partition of=bootsect.dos bs=512 count=1

Copy this file to your C:\

Enjoy!

Cheers,
cgkanchi