Mister Fido I can sympathize, I went through almost the exact same experience.
I had windows 98 on my C drive and was trying to install Mandrake 9.0 on my D: drive.
It had started to install on the D: leaving my C drive alone.
But the Linux installer kept rebooting halfway thru over and over.
So after 17 attempts I gave up and went to boot up my Windows and could not.
I tried boot tools like the windows start up rescue floppy disk I had but nothing I tried worked. So I thought I would just re-install windows and all my old files would be there.
wrong..... ouch
I had 95% of my files backed up on CD-R but it now takes me about 8 hours to reinstall my programs and data these days (I like to reformat once a year)
Careful about reinstalling Windows ... Seek out some expert where ever you physically reside. Don't make any rash short-tempered moves like I did.
I think Linux knocked out my Windows boot loader.
The whole experience hasn't put me off Linux ....I still think it is a great thing to pursue and support.
I'm just going to be very careful next time I attempt this.
good luck
Graham
I just had one bad experience.
