Recovering Fedora Bootloaders / Boot files after installing XP

Hello Fellow Linux-ers!

At present, I'm about to install windows XP on my computer, partitioning the drive between it and Fedora 17. I'm doing this because I'd like to do some gaming and have an XP installation disk, and I'd rather just partition the drive than use WINE. However, I know that windows doesn't play nice with other OS's, and has a nasty habit of overwriting the bootloaders of them when you install it. Before I install, I'd like to know how to get my linux bootloaders back so that I could recover Fedora and have it ready right away. This leads me to my question. Could anyone give me a step-by-step guide on how to recover the files necessary to boot my Fedora after installing XP? I know this is kind of a tall order, but if anyone could help, I'd be very appreciative. Thanks!

It's not that hard (these days)!

Normally, you'd want to go the other way: Install XP first, and then install Fedora, as grub will happily co-exist w/Windows and Linux, whereas Windows not so much. You can modify the Windows boot loader if you wish (e.g., C:/boot.ini), but why do that?

Anyway, you don't need to back up your Fedora bootloader. Just install XP and let it write itself to the MBR. Then reboot and make sure Windows boots. Then reboot w/your Fedora 17 install CD/DVD and select Rescue (or whatever they call it these days). Then re-install grub (grub2). Here's a guide with the simple steps:

Reinstall Grub 2 in Fedora 17 - Linux - abouthack

Then you'll need to add an entry in grub for your windows partition. I think you just need to run a probe command then modify grub. Try this tutorial:

Solid Smoke: Fedora 16 / Windows 7 - Dual booting with GRUB2

I did this about a month ago and it worked. I'll dig up the grub config file, if you have issues.

Great, thanks.