On Sat, 17 May 2008 13:17:53 -0500, Dr. Deb wrote:

> Got a question. I would like to reinstall XP so it will take advantage
> of my SATA drives (after all speed was the whole reason I bought them in
> the first place). I would not even be considering this if Wine were a
> bit more stable. The only thing I use XP for is to play WoW. I had it
> working under Wine (PCLinuxOS 2008MiniMe) and did a general upgrade.
> Between the update to the system, including Wine and the updates
> Blizzard made to Wow, I cannot get WoW to run under Linux any more.
> Bummer - much better experience than under XP.
>
> When I installed XP, I did not know it would not read SATA, after all
> Windows is the latest and greatest OS ever written. Right? Yeah,
> right. Anyhow I did the install on the new box and all went well. Got
> Linux up and running afterward (which was easier than the XP install).
> Then noticed that I was running my drives under IDE. Changed to SATA
> and, you know what happened. Linux ran like a top and XP refused to
> load.
>
> So, if I reinstall XP, which will wipe the bootloader, into the existing
> partition and then install PCLinux OS into an empty partition, but mount
> the existing Linux partition under the new install. Then I can grab my
> now current bootloader file (menu.1st), copy it to the new partition,
> rerun the bootloader app and I should be able to boot to my current
> Linux partition. I could then, rerun the bootloader just to tidy things
> up.
>
> Will that work?

You don't need to go through all that. All you need is a Live Linux CD
to reinstall grub onto the Master Boot Record using the command grub-
install. As long as your partitioning and locations of your OSes and
their files hasn't changed after the new install of XP, which would
affect menu.lst or grub.conf, then everything should work.

man grub-install or info grub-install for the details.

Stef