XP/Ubuntu 8.10 dual boot, lost GRUB boot and cannot restore

Some time ago I decided to give Ubuntu a try. I am still very new to Linux. I installed Ubuntu 8.10 from a CD onto a partition on a secondary hard drive. Windows XP had already been installed on the primary hard drive (hd0). The dual-boot feature worked fine. Then I had to re-install Windows. As I have found on numerous websites Windows XP is unfriendly to dual booting. I have basically lost the dual boot menu and need to get it back. I have tried several methods of restoring a GRUB menu.lst file from a live CD (the one I used to install Ubuntu) but to no avail. Either the recommended commands don't work or I don't have permission or it can't find the partitions. I can access the Linux partition and read the directories from the Live CD and I can find the menu.lst file but I can't figure out how to restore that setup with the odd way I have the partitions formatted. Here is the breakdown: primary physical HD is NTFS, one partition devoted to WinXP (dev/sda1). Secondary physical HD is broken into 3 partitions; sdb1 is formatted ntfs; sdb2 is extended: sdb5 formatted ext3, flagged as boot; sdb6 is linux-swap.

I have tried the command sequences suggested in most of the threads I found, at least the ones I can understand and think relevant. None have worked as expected. I can't seem to get permission to do the commands or linux can't find the directories and partitions I am specifying.

This is the menu.lst I have from /boot/grub (from after the ##commented-out defaults lines to the bottom). Everything looks functional (and it was, prior to re-installing WinXP over the old install) but I don't know how to restore its functionality given my setup.

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-14-generic
uuid ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-14-generic root=UUID=ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-14-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-14-generic (recovery mode)
uuid ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-14-generic root=UUID=ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-14-generic

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic
uuid ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=UUID=ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic (recovery mode)
uuid ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=UUID=ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
uuid ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic (recovery mode)
uuid ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic

title Ubuntu 8.10, memtest86+
uuid ae636da7-65db-4c37-8d43-ba0e0077e576
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Windows NT/2000/XP (loader)
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1