[vox-tech] aborted XP install kills linux

[Dave Margolis]

I don't see what the problem is.  You're friend was right.  You NEED the 
XP.  As a windows user he probaly thinks he's done a great job and given 
you a typical windows installation, because as you and I both know, a 
perfect windows would crash before it even gets booted.  I think you 
should look at what you have as like zen windows and just leave it the 
way it is.

OK, that wasn't even funny so I apologize.  However, unless he's not 
telling you something, XP shouldn't have been able to hose any more than 
the boot loader.  And since that _should_ be the case you ought to have 
been down the right path by reinstalling grup.  Pete's Lilo suggestion 
sounds good only because I don't know Grub, but in theory, if you know 
what you're doing with grub, it ought to be the same deal.  When you run 
fdisk/cfdisk off the boot disk do you see what you expect partition wise?

As a last step, I'd physically mount that drive as a slave on another 
system and see if you can do some data recover majic and start over. 
 That probably sounds drastic, but it's been my experience that when 
hard disks get hosed, they're usually hosed good.