Dual booting XP and openSuse 11.1

**raffymartin** · 24-Dec-2008, 23:48

I want to dual boot XP and Suse, I have two SATA drives one with XP and the other with Suse, but after the new installation of Suse 11.1 was finished and I restarted the PC GRUB hangs and I just get message Loading stage1.5

The PC never boots so I used the DVD to boot it up and have tried different things including installing Suse in the same hard drive where XP is installed but no luck.

I was able to dual boot openSuse 10 and XP within the same hard drive before, Any thoughts of what could be happening?

PS. for you to know I have been trying different stuffs and I reinstall Suse with the with XP HD disconnected and it booted perfectly, after connecting back the XP HD I got same message GRUB is loading stage1.5 and it just hangs.

I heard of a true guru called Mingus, but anybody that might help me out will be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

**caf4926** · 25-Dec-2008, 00:14

So does XP boot now?
You know - if you have just that drive connected?
You need to repair it's MBR really if it's not working. Then we can work on the rest which will be something like this:

Have XP working on one drive (you can have extra partitions on that drive if you don't need to use it all for XP)

Once you have a working XP. We can connect the other drive and change the boot order in BIOS to set it as 1st and the XP drive as 2nd

You install openSUSE to the non-windows drive (which is now 1st in boot in BIOS). An you will install Grub to it's MBR (not the windows drive). You MUST check this carefully during install. You have to go to the Booting section from the install summary screen and go to the advanced section and make sure the right drive sda? sdb? whichever it is, and that only the MBR box is checked.

This guide might help
Partitioning/Install Guide - openSUSE Forums

**tom_enos** · 25-Dec-2008, 02:42

So Suse works as the first hdd
when you plug in the xp drive do you plug it in as a slave to the first hdd (example a)or are you switching the drive order (example b)

Code:

a:
              Suse HDD
              xxxxxxxx
==============xxxxxxxx
            | xxxxxxxx 
            |           XP HDD
            |          xxxxxxxx
            ===========xxxxxxxx
                       xxxxxxxx

Code:

b:
               XP HDD
              xxxxxxxx
==============xxxxxxxx
            | xxxxxxxx 
            |          Suse HDD
            |          xxxxxxxx
            ===========xxxxxxxx
                       xxxxxxxx

if you are using a configuration like shown in a it is a simple fix
remove the suse hdd put the xp hdd in and Boot with the XP installation CD.

when prompted, press R to repair a Windows XP installation.

If repairing a host with multiple operating systems, select the appropriate one (XP) from the menu. If you have only one operating system, enter 1 to select it.

Enter the administrator password if prompted.

to fix the MBR, use the following command:

fixmbr

type y and ENTER to fix the MBR.

type exit to leave the recovery console and reboot

windows xp should now be working

shutdown and install the hdds as shown in example a

you should now be able to boot into openSuse
goto yast
system
boot loader
then add windows to the boot menu (see screenshot)
http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/4...apshot2op9.png

**raffymartin** · 25-Dec-2008, 23:47

caf4926, I have done this already and I after rebooting I just get the same message.

When I install openSuse with both hard drives connected and then executed fdisk -l in Suse I could see that the only partition mark as boot was the XP one, when I installed Suse with XP Drive disconnected and executed the same command then I could see that the root partition was marked as boot. right now I've creating a root partition of 22 GB a home of 35 GB and a swap of 3GB.

This why it's so frustraing because what you suggested it's supposed to work, but in this case it's not working at all...

**caf4926** · 25-Dec-2008, 23:58

It is certainly preferable to have the XP disc connected during the OS install. You must double check the bootloader settings during install.

But have a read here
GRUB Boot Multiboot openSUSE Windows (2000, XP, Vista) using the Grub bootloader.

Partitioning/Install Guide - openSUSE Forums

**raffymartin** · 26-Dec-2008, 00:01

Originally Posted by tom_enos

So Suse works as the first hdd
when you plug in the xp drive do you plug it in as a slave to the first hdd (example a)or are you switching the drive order (example b)

Code:

a:
              Suse HDD
              xxxxxxxx
==============xxxxxxxx
            | xxxxxxxx 
            |           XP HDD
            |          xxxxxxxx
            ===========xxxxxxxx
                       xxxxxxxx

Code:

b:
               XP HDD
              xxxxxxxx
==============xxxxxxxx
            | xxxxxxxx 
            |          Suse HDD
            |          xxxxxxxx
            ===========xxxxxxxx
                       xxxxxxxx

if you are using a configuration like shown in a it is a simple fix
remove the suse hdd put the xp hdd in and Boot with the XP installation CD.

when prompted, press R to repair a Windows XP installation.

If repairing a host with multiple operating systems, select the appropriate one (XP) from the menu. If you have only one operating system, enter 1 to select it.

Enter the administrator password if prompted.

to fix the MBR, use the following command:

fixmbr

type y and ENTER to fix the MBR.

type exit to leave the recovery console and reboot

windows xp should now be working

shutdown and install the hdds as shown in example a

you should now be able to boot into openSuse
goto yast
system
boot loader
then add windows to the boot menu (see screenshot)
http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/4...apshot2op9.png

Tom, I have set up the HDs as in example A, the hard drives are SATA so there's no master/slave, I just switch them in boot sequence section of the BIOS in order to have SUSE hard drive to boot first, but then GRUB hangs with message Loading stage1.5.

Yesterday, I used partition magic in Windows to make space in the XP HD for Suse and install openSuse 11.1 from scratch, but still the same message.

I noticed that when I ran fdisk -l the XP partition was the one mark as BOOT, after newly install Suse.

Shouldn't be the root partition of Suse mark as boot?

**raffymartin** · 26-Dec-2008, 00:14

Originally Posted by caf4926

It is certainly preferable to have the XP disc connected during the OS install. You must double check the bootloader settings during install.

But have a read here
GRUB Boot Multiboot openSUSE Windows (2000, XP, Vista) using the Grub bootloader.

Partitioning/Install Guide - openSUSE Forums

caf, I already checked Swerdna's article and he was the one that referred me to the forum, because this case it's really weird.

When I first installed Suse Enterprise 10, I just had one HD and dual boot worked perfectly, then I removed Suse Enterprise and install openSuse 10 and worked perfectly, I even tried Ubuntu and also worked with just one HD, then I added a second HD and for openSuse 10.2 it worked perfectly, then an update from Suse screwed up my system and I was able to reinstall again, but when moving to openSuse 11 I have been having this problem.

Yesterday I used partition magic to make some space for Suse in the same hard drive, and after installing openSuse 11.1 from scratch I got the same message Grub hangs and just loading stage1.5.

I don't know it is some drivers that might be causing the problem, my computer is a Compaq Presario SR1830NX,
the second hard drive that I bought is Segate Barracuda of 320 GB and right now XP is installed there.

**caf4926** · 26-Dec-2008, 00:16

Both the XP partition (possibly sda1)

and the suse root (sdb1 ?)

will be active/ should be.

Parted Magic should be able to add the bootable flag to the suse root, but I have never tried it.

My table looks like this:

Code:

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         261     2096451   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2   *         262        2872    20972857+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3            2873       14621    94373842+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4           14622       19457    38845170   83  Linux

If you are sure you forced MBR in the advanced tab of the booting section, try leaving both MBR and root partition radio buttons checked.

**tom_enos** · 29-Dec-2008, 21:04

will i'm at a loss, only tow things i can think of is

1: reinstall grub
2: try installing lilo

i know not much help, sorry

**raffymartin** · 31-Dec-2008, 00:05

Originally Posted by caf4926

Both the XP partition (possibly sda1)

and the suse root (sdb1 ?)

will be active/ should be.

Parted Magic should be able to add the bootable flag to the suse root, but I have never tried it.

My table looks like this:

Code:

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         261     2096451   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2   *         262        2872    20972857+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3            2873       14621    94373842+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4           14622       19457    38845170   83  Linux

If you are sure you forced MBR in the advanced tab of the booting section, try leaving both MBR and root partition radio buttons checked.

Caf, I will try this thanks, for the posting, I haven't because my wife and I just got a baby, so this is the first time I connect to the internet since last Wednesday/Thursday.

Thank you....