Disk Director 8 - Win XP Home MBR recovery issue - Mea Culpa
Hi,
Please excuse the following unforgiveable series of basic errors. This is not my usual practice.
System: Time Athlon desktop, with OS Selector 8, XP Home (with all SP's/updates) and 2 X SuSE Linux Office Desktop install.
My Dad's PC is an Athlon XP with a 146GB drive, which came with XP home preinstalled
He got Suse LINUX Office Desktop back in about 2004/5 which came bundled with OS Selector 8.
I backed up the system beforehand, installed OS Selector and SuSE, partitioning the drive with OS Selector, and then created an OS Selector recovery disk.
Idiot move number 1 - I did not back up the system before starting (although my Dad does keep backups of all his doc files).
Come 2010, the Windows partion was almost filled up. OS Selector did not permit resizing of the Windows partition, so I resized it using an Ubuntu 9.10 live CD. This worked successfully and the system restarted fine, with OS Selector operating as expected, and XP home working fine.
Idiot move no. 3: I again did not then make a backup.
Idiot move no. 4: I then installed Ubuntu 9.1 - again without backing up beforehand.
The Ubuntu 9.1 install seemed to replace the OS Selector boot with Grub. Although XP was listed, either it or Ubuntu would boot.
I used the Ubuntu Live CD to examine the disk - the Windows partition folder structure and OS and program files all seemed to be present.
Idiot move number 5: I didn't back up here either.
I then used the OS Selector recovery disk and this reinstated OS Selector. XP now begins the boot routine, with the splash screen, but then almost straight away the machine reboots.
Using the LiveCD, most of the XP file structure and folder contents no longer appear. It looks like nothing post 2004 / 5 remains.
My query: Has the OS Selector Recovery disc changed the MBR in some way? My hope is that the XP file structures / files are all still there. Would recreating the MBR recover access to the XP file structure? If so, how could I go about doing this?
Thanks.

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