Fixing vista multiboot with openSUSE

[rubjar]

I shall add my 2 cent as someone else said already (granito de arena por aka)

I just have a brand new laptop from dell, as many other "big brands" the hard disk comes with the OS already installed and a partition to "rescue" or to bring back your laptop as if it just had come out of the factory. So I had some problems trying to figure it out.

what worked for me was adding this to the "menu.lst":

title windows
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader (hd0,2)+1

it appeared with two of those ones ^ so I deleted one, changing the one left with those values, now is working just fine. (I hope I explained Myself)

[Darkelve78]

I remember with OpenSUSE 10.3 (or was it 10.2?) I messed up my own and a friends Windows boat sequence... we also got a scary 'chainloader' error message.

but we fixed it by changing the bios setting of LBA (Logical Block Adressing) to 'enable' or 'disable'. Could be it's no longer necessary though. But I thought I'd mention it for the sake of completeness.

[mingus725]

Originally Posted by Darkelve78

Could be it's no longer necessary though.

Actually, it still is, quite so. It depends on the disk, and the partition layout. The setting involves the issue of addressing the disk beyond the 1024 cyclinder boundary, and where the boot files are relatively located. In short, sometimes LBA needs to be set for grub to work (because grub uses the geometries passed by the bios). Additionally, depending on the system, it will be required for an OS to see the entire disk.

[deano_ferrari]

Good explanation Swerdna! This info needs to go on a multiboot wiki. It would help with the confusion about vista vs xp boot processes.

[lordhurukan]

Sorry to jump again on this topic but I had an asus notebook with vista pre-installed, I installed suse 10.3 and no way now to boot correctly on vista.

The only thing I can do is boot the "recovery partition" located on hd0,0 in GRUB "language" (sda1 in fdisk)

fdisk -l indicates that the root "/" partition for linux us sda3 and the windows vista's "C" (where the vista system is located) on sda2.

When trying

title windows
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

It doesn't boot windows displays a screen telling that something were wrong and asks to choose for "safe mode" or "normal boot", none of them can boot vista.

Linux suse boots normally.
I didn't find nothing to solve the issue but worse, how can I restore MBR ? Yast2 indicates that the /dev/sda2 is locked and there is no way to write MBR (fstab won't mount /dev/sda2 as /windows/System for example) it is said "in use" (????)
After two days of headache I decided to ask help to solve this... and by the way how can I rollback to the original partition scheme before suse splited windows ones to install ? First I got 2 partitions in NTFS one for the system and the other for the datas, linux has been installed on the first partition but took 20 Gb... how can I merge those once suse uninstalled ?

Thank you

[deano_ferrari]

Have you tried using the recovery utility to repair the windows MBR?

How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista

[mingus725]

Given that:

1. You know the partitioning is (a) Vista recovery, (b) Vista OS, (c) openSUSE installed; and
2. openSUSE can boot and the grub configuration looks correct; and
3. You cannot now access the recovery partition; and
4. Apparently you allowed openSUSE to downsize your Vista partition to create a new partition for openSUSE . . .

It is quite possible that the problem is with the partition table. Unfortunately, Microsoft has said little about the fact that Vista creates partitions differently than any other version of Windows (or any other OS). There are several Microsoft kb articles about this causing serious problems with, for example, dual installations with XP, or with certain bios's, or with 3rd party partitioning tools (several vendors have already been stung by this issue; it is discussed here: Multibooters - Vista's New Partitioning Rules).

In this recovery situation, Microsoft recommends using "Startup Repair" from the Vista Recovery Environment. You have an oem system, so the RE may be (a) on a Vista installation disk, (b) on a custom recovery disk produced by the oem, (c) loaded on the hard disk and no separate media was provided (this sounds like your situation), or (d) you have to request the RE media from the oem. The Startup Repair is an automated process; there is also an RE option to go into a command line shell, as is described in @deano's link posted above.

If you cannot get into your RE and/or don't have Vista media, you can download it from the web. I haven't been able to find it on Microsoft's site (not even TechNet or MSDN), but there is an active bittorrent to get it. It's 120MB and seeded well; on broadband <10 minutes. Get the torrent here Windows Vista Recovery Disc Download

Once repaired, if you would like to keep openSUSE, install the Neosmart (same site as above) EasyBCD tool - it is excellent, by far the best tool to configure the Vista boot manager. You would need to boot into the openSUSE DVD, choose Repair, go to the Boot Manager repair, and instruct it to install grub on the openSUSE partition (NOT the MBR). Then reboot into Vista, run EasyBCD, and add openSUSE to the Vista BCD. There is a tutorial on the Neosmart site; it is very easy.

If you want to remove openSUSE after Vista repair, just go to Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management, and reformat it with NTFS. Physically merging that space with the existing Vista partition may not be an option with Vista (I haven't tried that). The reason is that the Vista partition is mounted, and a mounted partition cannot be physically altered. A 3rd-party partitioner (like Partition Magic) can do this before Vista starts up; I doubt Vista has such an option. But at the minimum, you would have a usable partition for Vista.

Finally, just for reference: The partition showing as "in use" means that it was mounted by Vista and then had an abnormal unmount; to clear this flag requires booting into Vista. And, not being able to mount this partition has absolutely nothing to do with the MBR; the MBR resides at the first sector on the disk, before any of the partitions.

[mingus725]

@lordhurukan -

Two afterthoughts . . .

1. There could be (note, "could be", not "will be") an important difference between the vanilla RE on CD as opposed to the RE installed on your hard disk by Asus. Vista's installation setup (which is what the RE uses to set up its environment) does not have drivers for all SATA disk drives. If the disk controller is included in the motherboard chipset, Vista will see the controller because it has the chipset drivers. But if the controller is on a separate device (like on one of my Asus mobo's, it's a Silicon Image device), Vista's setup may not see it. If so, when you boot the RE, it will not see the disk, and it will prompt you to install the driver from other media. You can probably verify what is in your machine on the Asus website, looking under the laptop or under its motherboard specs. If a separate driver is required, there will very likely be a download for it.

2. It is possible that Startup Repair may destroy the Linux partition(s). If you want to re-create a partition to re-install openSUSE, you can do that with Vista (actually, 2 partitions, including 1 for swap; you don't mention that partition in your post above). You would then just format the existing partitions for openSUSE. Under no circumstances should you use any other tool to physically alter the Vista partitions, except Vista itself OR a Vista-certified tool.

[tma_nz]

I installed openSUSE on a partition on my second hdd (Vista was on the first hdd) after which Grub failed to boot back Vista. Solved this by editing the menu.lst by replacing what it had for the windows boot commands with:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Hope it helps anyone with the same kind of problem.

[tripcat]

I have read the posts above nothing "seems" to be my problem. 1st - newbie to openSuse, but want start using *nx distros. I'm not new to computers etc. OK my question
1 - I have Vista Ultimate drive 1 /dev/sdd1
2 - I partioned (in Vista) one of my 500 Gig drive giving suse 250Gig of space. /dev/sdb2.
3 - I want to install suse to /dev/sdb2 and this appears to work. I DO NOT install to the master boot record so I can use EasyBCD to control the boot process.
4 - I now have the following devices:
sda1 - 466 Gig Vista,
sdb1 - 256 Gig Vista
sdb2 - partitioned hopefully Suse
sdc1 - 150 Gig Vista/program drive
sdd1 - 250 Gig Vista Ultimate Boot Device


Results:
However, the install goes great up to the point I get a generic logon screen Logon-{varies each time} and my root ID and password I setup do not work. I have to reboot.

I then try to put my entry in EasyBCD and I get a message screen about no boot found when trying to boot OpenSUSE.

I know it's user error but any expert advice would be great.

AMD X2 6400+
4 Gig of RAM
2 nVidia 8800GT in SLi
2 500Gig SATAII
1 150GiG SATAII
1 250Gig SataII
2 4X Liteon R/W DVD Drives
Vista Ultimate


Thank you
-Tripcat