Dual Boot Suse 10.3/vista - Vista Won't Boot

After about five years not having used linux anymore, I decided to install Opensuse 10.3 on my new Dell inspiron 1720 laptop. I used the X86-KDE cdrom to do the installation, working in the preinstalled vista on the laptop, I just started the .exe on this CD and suse installed fine.

Rebooting however, none of the options for windows in the grub menu seem to work and boot me into vista. Booting Suse was not a problem.

I have the following partitions on my harddisks:

sda1 118M (with I think Dell diagnostic tools)
sda2 10G
sda3 100G (the actual Vista partition)

sdb1 Swap
sdb2 ntfs data partition
sdb3 linux partition


And I tried the following options in de menu.lst grup file

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1

-> nothing happens when using this option

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd0,2)+1

-> now I get a message 'disk read error'

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd0,3)+1

-> nothing happens when using this option

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd1,1)+1

-> this gives message 'bootmgr missing'

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

-> this boots the dell diagnostics


As I'm running out of inspiration, is there anybody who has a suggestion to make vista boot again on this dell inspiron ? Anybody having the same experiences ?

I can access all windows partitions with suse, so I saw that the executable on the cd has made a folder opensuse in the sda3 partition and even a menu.lst file in the root of it. I hope that this didn't corrupt the vista bootloader.


all helpful comments gratefully appreciated !!

Joris

Hi josearcadio, welcome to SuseForums.net.

Help me with the geometry:
Sdb is a second drive. Is it an attached usb drive or internal drive?
When you installed Linux did you use the boot manager in the Laptop bios to make sdb the boot drive or did you leave sda as the boot drive?
Please look in the file device.map at /boot/grub/device.map and post the contents here. This command in a console will show you the file:

sudo cat /boot/grub/device.map

Swerdna

After about five years not having used linux anymore, I decided to install Opensuse 10.3 on my new Dell inspiron 1720 laptop. I used the X86-KDE cdrom to do the installation, working in the preinstalled vista on the laptop, I just started the .exe on this CD and suse installed fine.

Rebooting however, none of the options for windows in the grub menu seem to work and boot me into vista. Booting Suse was not a problem.

I have the following partitions on my harddisks:

sda1 118M (with I think Dell diagnostic tools)
sda2 10G
sda3 100G (the actual Vista partition)

sdb1 Swap
sdb2 ntfs data partition
sdb3 linux partition
And I tried the following options in de menu.lst grup file

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1

-> nothing happens when using this option

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd0,2)+1

-> now I get a message 'disk read error'

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd0,3)+1

-> nothing happens when using this option

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd1,1)+1

-> this gives message 'bootmgr missing'

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

-> this boots the dell diagnostics
As I'm running out of inspiration, is there anybody who has a suggestion to make vista boot again on this dell inspiron ? Anybody having the same experiences ?

I can access all windows partitions with suse, so I saw that the executable on the cd has made a folder opensuse in the sda3 partition and even a menu.lst file in the root of it. I hope that this didn't corrupt the vista bootloader.
all helpful comments gratefully appreciated !!

Joris
[/b]

I find EasyBCD to be the easiest way to dual-boot with Vista. Watch out though, Vista SP1 will not install with extra entries in the boot loader.

What I have had to do is boot to the Vista CD and go to Repair My Computer (something like that) and open a command-line and use diskpart to set the Vista partition as active. After a reboot Vista boots. You won't see Suse yet. Install EasyBCD and add the Suse entry to the boot loader. After that dual-booting works perfectly.

Thank you Swerdna for your reply.

sda and sda are both internal drives.

The output of device.map reads

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb

In the bios boot sequence internal HDD comes before second internal HDD. I haven't touched this.

Josearcadio

Hi josearcadio, welcome to SuseForums.net.

Help me with the geometry:
Sdb is a second drive. Is it an attached usb drive or internal drive?
When you installed Linux did you use the boot manager in the Laptop bios to make sdb the boot drive or did you leave sda as the boot drive?
Please look in the file device.map at /boot/grub/device.map and post the contents here. This command in a console will show you the file:

sudo cat /boot/grub/device.map

Swerdna
[/b]

Hi try these (two because I can't figure out if sda1 is a notebook-special hidden utility or vista's bootloader)
rootnoverify (hd1,2)
makeactive
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

then this

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
makeactive
chainloader (hd0,1)+1

and maybe even this

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
makeactive
chainloader (hd0,2)+1

I know this sounds so klutzy but then try them with rootnoverify (hd0,2) if that's the vista partition

I'm gonna install vista just like yours if it doesn't work, just to see, but I couldn't do that until Monday (today is Saturday here)
Swerdna

Hi

Thank you all for your help and suggestions.

The settings which did finally work were:

rootnoverify (hd0,2)
makeactive
chainloader (hd0,2)+1

Now I can go on and configure suse. Still some work to do as I didn't manage to get a working X yet...

JoseArcadio

Hi try these (two because I can't figure out if sda1 is a notebook-special hidden utility or vista's bootloader)
rootnoverify (hd1,2)
makeactive
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

then this

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
makeactive
chainloader (hd0,1)+1

and maybe even this

rootnoverify (hd1,2)
makeactive
chainloader (hd0,2)+1

I know this sounds so klutzy but then try them with rootnoverify (hd0,2) if that's the vista partition

I'm gonna install vista just like yours if it doesn't work, just to see, but I couldn't do that until Monday (today is Saturday here)
Swerdna
[/b]