Windows 7 SP1 is out…

… and I should know by now my MBR wouldn't survive it. Well, what do we have SuperGrub for? Still, there was too much trial and error involved in restoring it, so, for next time, here's my log on how to restore openSuSE's MBR on the ASUS u43jc after Windows wiped it.

1. I booted willy-nilly into Windows, started untebootin and installed the latest SuperGrub CD to a freshly FAT32 formatted thumb drive
2. I got into the BIOS with F2, the USB boot option is pretty well hidden (entry 'Hard Drive BBS Order' in the Boot tab)
3. The SuperGrub disk brought up my installed grub, note that the disk order has changed by booting from USB -- my primary hard disk was now hd1 instad of hd0, so I had to change the first line to root (hd1,7) (typing 'e' is for edit in Grub, 'b' for boot)
4. Restoring the MBR in YaST or reinstalling the grub package didn't help, I had to setup grub directly in the MBR via the grub console (I'm sure this is possible from the YaST GUI, but the options are harder to figure out than typing a few bash lines)
   sudo su
   grub
   find /boot/grub/stage1
   root (hd0,7) #or whatever the find command returned
   setup (hd0) #this writes grub directly into the MBR. Setting it up on (hd0,7) didn't help
   quit

Eureka.