[opensuse] hosed my MBR

Hosed my MBR

I tried to restore the MBR on my tower with a saved backup MBR with dd if=/dev/hda etc...
which I created on my laptop. Dumb Dumb Dumb.I though that they were both win XP on the 1st
drive, it should work. Was I stupid to try this. Now I'm in a fine mess.
I had 11 partitions on my hda drive and hda6 - 11 were removed from /dev

Now this is what I got running fdisk -l :
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: invalid flag 0x434b of partition table 5 will be corrected by w(rite)

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1657 13309821 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 18864 19457 4770360 12 Compaq diagnostics
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda3 3258 6116 22959720 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda4 6116 18864 102392640 5 Extended
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda5 ? 74338 184463 884580633 79 Unknown

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/hdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 980 7871818+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 981 1937 7687102+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb3 1938 9729 62589240 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 1938 2065 1028128+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb6 2066 4105 16386268+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb7 4106 6017 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb8 6018 7413 11213338+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb9 7414 8203 6345643+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb10 8204 8792 4731111 83 Linux
/dev/hdb11 8793 9729 7526421 83 Linux
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The hda* drive shows some of the partitions from my laptop.
My hdb* drive has all my backup linux so no loss.

I could repartition the a drive but gparted doesn't see the whole a drive and neither does
PartionMagic.

I reinstalled grub in the MBR of hda and I cann boot all my linux on the hdb drive,
SuSE 10.2 boots up on /dev/hdb11 shown above with "fdisk -l"

I tried using a boot floppy from win 98SE using "fdisk /MBR", that didn't work.

1. If I reinstall XP would that restore the MBR?
2. Would "fixmbr" work from the XP rescue disk?
3. If I interchanged the hda and hdb drives, would the new hda (hdb) have a good MBR?
4. Would the hdb (hda) partitions be visible?

I really need some help on how to re-format the a drive.

This problem slowed down my computer,
What a mess

jozien
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