Graechan,

Selecting the "Use all space" option below will replace all partitions on your 80g USB drive sdb.

You will lose all the data on the 80g drive but if you follow the step by step instructions I posted, no other drives will be modified and your primary Windows install will remain untouched. Having two physical drives for dual booting Windows and Linux is the best approach, imo.

You actually lost windows on your main drive? I thought you were kidding.

Dang, I'm sorry to hear that. How did it happen?

If you only overwrote the Window's MBR, you can restore that with the repair disk.

I do hope you have backups.

I'm certain the step by step instructions I posted are correct.

I'm sure we can find you a Windows emergency repair disk. Perhaps only the Windows bootloader was overwritten? if so, that can be repaired. What version of Windows do you have?

What PC manufacturer do you have Graechan? Each manufacturer has a recovery routine that might be accessable during boot (but can be distructive so back you data first). It's been a few years so I've forgotten most of the tricks. Believe on Dell's it was CTRL F11 key combos. If you didn't delete the recovery partition but still can't engage the recovery procedure for Dells, there use to be a way to repair this (I had downloaded an ISO which created a boot disk to repair Dells but again, I no longer am in this business anymore). I believe HPs are just F11. I would recommend you have a recovery disk for eMachines since 9 times out of 10 the recovery procedure won't work. lol

Anyway, wish you the best Graechan.

You can get files that can be burned to floppy to create recovery disks. I'll see if I can find the page. I don't know if you can fix the MBR with these.

This is for XP http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_make_a_start_up_disk_for_Windows_XP