looking for solutions for a dual boot T41p (damaged HPA)

[bidone]

I have a t41p with XP(10G), shared storage (20G) and SUSE 10.0 (rest).
As always, XP appears slow and wired recently, so I decided to reinstall it from the HPA,
which I have done once before and it worked very well: it only worked on the XP partition and
left the shared storage and Linux untouched.
But I couldn't do it this time, my only guess is it was damaged somehow...
(I have replaced the LCD recently by myself and broke a line inside the shell and near the left hitch,
but couldn't feel what damage it would bring... Is it for the HPA??? )))

I have the recovery disks, but as I found in some posts, the disks will ERASE the whole harddisk?
EVERYTHING? including the FAT32 storage and my linux?
Is this true? so it does not behave the same as HPA?
That is the last thing I would like to do!!!

What is the possible solution by doing the least work?
Is it possible that, merging the hidden partition to the current XP partition and format it for
the new XP and install the XP with the normal disks.
or what you can suggest me to do?

thanks for any ideas and discussions!

[GomJabbar]

I have the recovery disks, but as I found in some posts, the disks will ERASE the whole harddisk?
EVERYTHING? including the FAT32 storage and my linux?
Is this true? so it does not behave the same as HPA?
That is the last thing I would like to do!!!

That is true. EVERYTHING. If you made a backup of your Windows Linux, and FAT32 partitions, you could restore the backup after using the Product Recovery Discs.

Can you still boot into Rescue and Recovery?

[toad]

Boot knoppix, rescue everything you can, chuck XP and Suse and install Kubuntu

OK, so forget about the rant, but use knoppix to rescue what you can/want. Then get a proper OS on there

[Temetka]

If you are using Ext2 or ReiserFS windows and R&R will NOT be able to see the partition. I second booting off some live CD and backing everything up. Then re-create your partitions (minus Linux). Re-run R7R and make a backup onto CD. Then re-load linux. This way you can restore quickly almost everything, then you just have to worry about backing up linux.