XP won't boot after Linux install

[mgorse at mgorse.dhs.org (Mike Gorse)]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the advice.  I wound up reinstalling XP on the machine 
yesterday, but I'll save your message; it may be helpful if/when I 
reinstall Linux on the machine.  I first tried running fixmbr and fixboot 
from the recovery console, but it seemed to make things worse (it wasn't 
finding ntldr), so I reinstalled.  I also seem to have wiped out the 
recovery partition on the hard disk.  I'm not sure how I did this, but I 
don't think it is a real partition.  (I don't remember fdisk listing any 
extra partitions, and I read an account on a web page suggesting that it 
isn't a partition and that it is protected by the bios.  So I'm guessing 
that fdisk was accessing the drive directly and bypassing the bios and the 
protection, but that is pure speculation.)  In any case, IBM didn't 
package an XP cd or a recovery cd; they expect me to be able to recover 
from this hidden area on my drive that I erased.  Of course, I would have 
known to be careful had I read the manual before trying to put Linux on 
the thing, but I'm still not sure what I should have done with fdisk to 
use as much space as I can without erasing the recovery info.

-- Michael Gorse / AIM:linvortex / http://mgorse.home.dhs.org --
A better world is possible! http://www.kucinich.us