TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

ok, so getting my PC to dual boot with a single HDD is relatively painless because the linux installer can set it all up automaticly for you. But there comes a time a few months down the road when windows has fallen to pieces and needs to be reinstalled.

But if you reinstall windows, wont it rewrite the boot sector part of the disk and you will "loose" Linux? When i say loose, I mean the files will still be there but you wont be able to boot into it because when the PC is turned on, it will go straight into windows.

So my question is how do you get Linux back after you reinstall windows? Is there anything you can do before hand to make it easier? (like installing Linux first, partitioning the HDD in a perticular way, etc)

You just boot from some other media.. It could be something as simple as a generic GRUB floppy or the "recovery" option from the Linux install CD.

Once inside your Linux installation, you just run "grub-install /dev/hda" (or /dev/whatever) to rewrite the MBR with GRUB.

Ok, sounds simple enough. I'll try that next time, thanks.