I'm new to Linux and have been using SUse 9.2 and Windows XP. Hard drive setup was as follows: Swap (502MB);C drive;Linux (4 Gig);E drive (contained XP OS). Using 37 Gig Drive, Athlon 800 mhz CPU.

I used PartionMagic in Windows to set up the partitions and had BootMagic disabled and all worked well. System would boot to Grub and then from there I could go to Windows XP boot. Linux partion was my active partition. Everything ran just fine...but I wasnt using Linux often and decided to try to boot directly to XP.
I thought making E drive (XP OS) active would avoid Linux (didnt understand MBR at the time) so that I could boot directly to Windows boot instead of Grub. But, obviously, Grub still booted first. I made the mistake, then, by enabling BootMagic in the hopes I could get to Windows directly without going through Grub. Well BootMagic hid my C Drive which was viewable simultaneously with E:drive (which contained XP OS, another setup mistake I made when partitioning...but still worked). As a result Grub is gone and I also cannot boot to XP or Linux, even after trying to activate C:drive or activating E:drive (containing my XP OS). I'm pretty sure that XP recognizes C:drive as home, even though XP OS is on E.

I have not yet used 'fixmbr' for fear of loosing data contained in C and E partitions. Any ideas?

I've considered using spare hard drive as a new boot drive and access files from original hard drive, save them, and then start from scratch with XP. This would require me to go back over all the updates (sp2)...etc...etc. Painful.