11.1 / XP boot loader major problem

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I HAVE SEEN OTHER POSTS WITH THIS EXACT SAME (initial) PROBLEM SO IT SEEMS LIKE A MAJOR BUG. Is this the place to report these things? I hope this message serves as a way to report what I would consider a “BUG” and also maybe someone can help me fix my system.

The reason I’m starting a new thread is that I seem to be the only one who has mucked up their system to this degree and I can’t seem to restore my GRUB / boot loader using normal instructions. Hopefully there’s someone with a fundemental understanding of partitioning and booting who knows a way to “uncorrupt” it.

Anyway, after sucessfully installing 11.1 on top of (alongside on separate partition) XP (dual boot worked fine), I innocently went into yast to edit the boot loader settings just because I wanted XP to boot by default, and I renamed it “windows XP” instead of “Windows” … and I changed the boot order to put windows at the top.

So… *** I did not make any other changes ***, but apparently the boot loader configurator in yast DOES make additional (unknown to me) changes because when the computer rebooted, I got the message “No operating system” and no GRUB. So… I tried to do “repair Installation” and “rescue installation.” I couldn’t find a way to fix the situation using these tools even though I created a new boot loader… restored MBR, etc. At one point, I used the tool to create a new boot loader, and it said “success,” but then immediately following (prior to reboot), during the subsequent system check it said “there in an error with the boot loader.” (!) The only thing that worked was to reinstall suse 11.1. So… that’s what I did and it worked (dual booted with windows) and everything was fine until I had the bright idea to edit the boot loader AGAIN in Yast (don’t ask me why… I guess I thought the first time was a fluke)… I renamed windows and made it default. Same thing again… “No operating system.” This time… I tried some additional things using the rescue tools, but nothing worked, and apparently I did something bad because now… even though I have sucessfully reinstalled suse 11.1 again… this time my main windows partition is not accessible (i noticed it was missing during the latest suse reinstall… and I tried to use the “reload mount points from disk” button during reinstall, which appeared to work at first, but then when it resumed installation, it rejected the loaded mount points and the partition was missing again. So, now suse 11.1 is working ok, but I can’t mount the “C” drive (NTFS) … it says “cannot mount invalid or nonexistent file system.”

I am scared to do any “file system repair” on sda1 for fears it may cause more damage and make the data more difficult to recover. I am considering buying a new HD, reinstalling windows on it and accessing this drive via USB (hopefully) unless someone knows a way to fix this.

my partitions (on a 60GB drive) are setup as follows:

Device size type fs type

/dev/sda1 37.11 GB HPFS/NTFS

(this was the main XP partition, drive “C” and will not mount anymore)

/dev/sda2 18.78 GB Extended

/dev/sda5 6.76 GB Win95 FAT32 LBA FAT

(this is a partition that used to we windows drive D… a drive i wanted to share between linux and windows. this drive mounts fine and is accessible in linux)

/dev/sda6 2.01 GB Linux swap

/dev/sda7 5.00 GB Linux native ext3

/dev/sda8 5.02 GB Linux native ext3

Also… during my attempts at fixing this, I tried running the XP install disk… just to see if I could erase linux and repair windows, but it gives a blue screen error and references pci.sys. I know the HD works through PCI. I don’t know why this would be, but maybe someone does.

I think there is something fundamentally messed up such as:

  • more than one partition being flagged as a boot partition?

  • the mbr being messed up?

I have no idea… I wish I knew more about boot loaders / GRUB / chainloading… etc… you may say that I should stay out of the boot loader configurator, in that case, but if a user can’t simply rename an entry in the boot menu without crashing their system, than that is a problem.

2

boobernuzzy wrote:

>
> I HAVE SEEN OTHER POSTS WITH THIS EXACT SAME (initial) PROBLEM SO IT
> SEEMS LIKE A MAJOR BUG. Is this the place to report these things? I

Not sure it is a bug, apparently there are 2 different ways of getting the disk mapping (I had a similar problem before and I needed to set the mapping of the drives again in grub’s menu.lst file).
I also had to remove the drives in the bios and add them again. Don’t ask me why, but it worked.

BTW, Something that might come in handy is this:

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/

It tries for find where the grub files are and what you might want to boot.
It helped me once.

> and I changed the boot order to put windows at the top.

Hm… there is a default variable in the menu.lst that points to which of the entries is the default.
I wonder if you missed part of the entry when moved around…

I hope it helps

-G-

3

Well thanks for the response, but I have found a fix that works for me.

For anyone with the same problem…

The problem turns out to be that I “”"“accidentally”""" (yast decided to do it for me without me asking or changing anything with regards to this… try it for yourself I dare ya) overwrote the bootloader on the windows partition with grub.

The solution for this (one of a few) is to run a windows XP boot CD and press “R” to run the recovery console. Then while at the C:> prompt, type “fixmbr” and then “fixboot”. This may be overkill, but it got my windows working again… and now I have the choice of reinstalling grub with the tools available on the suse install cd, OR I can just delete all partitions other than windows and reinstall suse.

ANyway… the point is that I ain’t going into the boot loader configurator in yast ever again!!! there are many poor newbs like me out there who are crashing their systems just because they want to edit the boot loader in yast and simply change small things like boot default, order, text, etc… not by edditting the text files (menu.lst, etc.) but with the wizard/tool… not knowing that when you click apply, it applies “defaults” which don’t match your system!!! CODE RED!!! CODE RED!!!

4

I had the same problem also. I installed 4 times. The first 2 times I did the same thing as you, rename Windows 1 to Windows XP and messed up grub. The last to time after the system reboot it tell me I have no OS installed. I did a fdisk /mbr and now I’m back to 11.0.

I didn’t figure out exactly what is the problem. But I think I have some idea. There is some other parameters in Yast grub setup. There is one for hd boot sequence and there is a check box for MBR. I think that Yast is trying to boot from some where else than the MBR.

I don’t want to touch anything until I have a clear answer.

BTW I recommend you a tool like Gparted live CD very handy in those situation.

5

I agree with the OP, this is a MAJOR bug.

I have been fighting it for the last week and the bug has ruined at least 5 installs for me. I also lost a Windows installation I had been using since 2006, along with a ton of data. I would call that major.

6

this thingy is rotten, I also did some 5-6 installs due to this.

7

I have the same problem with rearranging the order in the Grub menu using Yast. I just wanted to move a Windows XP chain boot into the second slot instead of the third. Next thing you know, the boot record is garbage. Fortunately, I did this reordering soon after my SUSE 11.1 install, so I just redid the entire install as a scratch install (I keep /home and other personally valuable contents in a separate partition so I can safely reformat / during installs).

I’ve also noticed that the SUSE 11.1 version of OpenOffice3.0 is broken. I can’t correctly edit .doc files I created under 11.0. Using a OpenOffice 3.0 build directly from OpenOffice fixes this.

8

Hey, I didn’t feel it was necessary to start a new thread so…

I attempted to dual boot Vista with Susie 11.1, with Vista previously installed onto the machine. When I loaded Susie on restart from a CD, I was successful, but some time through the process of installing Susie onto the actual HD it brought up an error message:

GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename. ]
grub> setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0,3) (hd0,5)
Checking if “/boot/grub/stage1” exists… yes
Checking if “/boot/grub/stage2” exists… yes
Checking if “/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5” exists… yes
Running “embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,3)”… failed (this is not fatal)
Running “embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,5)”… failed (this is not fatal)
Running "install --force-lba --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,3) /boot/grub/stage2 p /boot/grub/menu.lst "… failed

Error 22: No such partition
grub> quit

I’ve tried this a few times but I can’t seem to get it to work; also searched through a lot of websites and forums. This is my first time working with Linux, so please have pity with me - mercy! Any help would be great.
Thanks!

9

Rojodan,

exactly the same message occurred to me many times (about 5 reinstallations of 11.1 into a partition, which worked fine with 11.0 before, recovering MBR and activate the windows partition with a windows rescue disk), until I understood, what this error message said:

Grub for some reason tried to install into a partition, which did not work. In my case it was sda2, which is the extended partition of the first disc.

My latest test was to install 11.1 with secure kernel options and text modus (both might not be critical, but it charged me to follow the text information by carefully READING!!! the screen). Then I noticed this setting at the point, when the grub setup is shown during installation process just before installation is started. I changed it by hitting the boot loader installation menu, unchecked the extended partition option and checked the MBR option instead.

What to say: grub installed as it should, and - moreover - after installation I tried to change the entries of grub menu.lst with Yast (as many others did like me >:) ). I was changing “windows 1” into “Windows XP”, put it on top position and activated it as standard.

And, well, it worked!

Now, as I am writing this, I crosschecked the actual Yast boot loader installation tab: Two boot locations are checked:

(x) Master boot record
(x) Root partition.

What the heck does this mean? Are there two locations of the boot loader now?

And what about the other boot loader options: set active flag in boot partition is checked there (as the only one). What does it mean to write the generic boot code into the MBR? What is Trusted Grub good for?

Anyway, it works. Good luck to you!

10

Please visit swerdna’s page. He has a comprehensive and easy-to-understand guide on fixing multiboot problems. The page lists methods for 11.0 that work on 11.1. Following his directions, I fixed an XP problem. I also prevented a Vista problem with 2 clicks.

11

was this problem fixed?

it ruined me 2 installations in the past, and i still want to change the boot screen to set windows default

12

Yes there was a bug in the YaST Boot Loader module. Specifically, the problem was actually in the “parted” program and resulted in orphaned sections of the menu.lst file when changes were made without actually reinstalled the loader (e.g., changing the default selection). The fix is in the Online Updates now. So if Updates are enabled during installation, or the Online Update is done immediately following the install, the problem is resolved. Before making a changes via YaST, I would double-check in Online Updates that the patch has been applied.

First and most important is not to panic. For example, while “no operating system” sounds horrific, in reality most of the time it is thrown by the bios when there is no bootstrap code found in the active partition; the fix is to correctly reset the boot flag in the partition table, which is easily done. It is important to not start using fixes without understanding the problem first; very often that makes the situation much worse and/or the remedy painful.

@SickBoy87 - check your Online Updates patch list to make sure you’ve got the patch. Then you should be OK.

@vetti - yes, the boot loader has been installed twice. If grub stage1 is in the MBR then it is controlling the boot. The grub stag1 in the root partition boot sector will only be called if it is chainloaded from another loader, which could be a grub elsewhere in the machine or the XP loader (if on the same disk).

@Rojodan - Sorry, I don’t understand exactly what you did. But your problem is different from what the thread was opened for. You’ll get better/faster help starting your own thread. Be as complete and specific as possible with the problem description and all the steps you performed.

13

If you don’t mind using Ntldr instead of Grub you can set up Dual boot with XP and not change the MBR. You will need to install Grub into the root directory and not MBR. The path here: NT, 2000 and XP and Linux dual-booting

will give a very simple process using Bootpart to set up dual boot. I have used this on desktops and laptops with XP. I tried multiple versions of Linux and set up 3 versions of Linux with XP and it worked fine.

Hope this helps.
Regards,
John

14

The YaST Boot Loader module will move down a decision tree trying to determine the best setup. If feasible, it will install grub to the boot sector of the openSUSE root partition if it is on a “primary”, or if it is on a “logical” it will install grub to the boot sector of the “extended primary”, and then switch the MBR partition table “active” flag to that partition - while leaving the Windows boot code in the MBR untouched (that code simply looks for the active flag and tranfers control to the boot sector on that partition). The method using ntldr is essentially the same, except that it puts a copy of the linux boot sector in the XP root directory and calls it from boot.ini.

15

thanks for the reply, my parents sometimes had troubles when booting the computer and it entered in linux by default because they didnt know how to exit from there lol!

16

Hello all,

I’m new here also I’m new to opensuse 11.1 and linux at all,

I have problem with opensuse 11.1 with my windows XP sp3.

I have Laptop LG tablet LT20 and it had 56GB hard with following drives C:(19GB,primary) and D:(33GB,logical) also it has recovery but it is not visible (even with partition manager i can’t find it) so anyway i wanted to install opensuse i delete my D: partition and make 20 GB primary drive for my windows and approximately i left 12GB for linux.

I started to install opensuse everything is going fine i used that unallocationed free space (as i mentioned above it was 12GB) and install it successfully and it booted completly evrything working just fine.

BUTTTT the problem arises when i want to boot my windows xp, i rebooted my computer choose windows1 and after loading one line it appears some bluescreen(BSOD) but it goes very fast and i can’t read what it wrote then laptop is restarting automatically and this happened again again, everytime i want to boot my windows xp but everything is fine with opensuse it booted normally.

I checked my windows xp installation by uninstalling opensuse and after that WOW windows xp works correctly and everythings came from opensuse or MBR or bootloader or something like that…

I’am really tired from searching whole day trying everything as i saw in forums and no luck…

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HEEEEEEEELLLLLPPPPP MMMMEEEEE guys pleeeaaaase you are my last hope … :((

17

To report on bugs, see
Submitting Bug Reports - openSUSE

To go directly to bugzilla
https://bugzilla.novell.com/index.cgi

There are still serious bugs in YaST repairer. I recommend staying away from YaST automatic repair.

FWIW, I have been trying 11.2RC1. It seems improved but still has YaST repair bugs which won’t be fixed til later.

11.2RC1 seems to have an improved grub.