[ShadowAce]

...how can I recover the original MBR,...

I think you are misunderstanding me. The linux bootloader goes on the MBR of the new master--not your Windows drive. You will not touch your windows drive at all during the installation of Linux onto the new master drive.

[usgator]

Interesting, still a bit worried.  As I put in the other post, I had some guy who claimed to be a "Linux Guru" do something like this and he KILLED my PC.