128 gb error machine won't boot. even not able to access the bios so taht i can boot from dvd

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi

I’m new to opensuse, this is the first time i’m trying it. before this i’ve used ubuntu, fedora. I’m stuck in a prb, please help me out.

Well, i have a laptop lenovo G560 that came preinstalled with windows 7 home basic x64, with 2gb RAM and 600 gigs of harddrive and it’s got a C2D processor 2.13 ghz. The factory default settings, had c: drive of around 550 gb, 100 mb windows reserve for boot i guess, n 29 bg was for lenovo drivers n applications, n the last partition that was of 15 gb had OEM image.

Initially, the problem was i was not able to find the primary partition, so i deleted the lenovo partition, n shrinked c: drive to 350 gb, n i had an allocated partition of 224 gb i guess. I did the installation of Opensuse on that partition.

It showed me the error “The bootloader is installed on a partition that does not lie entierly below 128 gb. The system might not boot if BIOS support only lba24(result is error 18 during install grub MBR)”. I simply ignored and carried on with the installation. It installed and it worked too. The moment i shutdown the machine and tried to restart it, i codn’t even move beyond the boot screen, i tried to press F2 to go to the setup page, F12 to change the boot order, computer froze none worked.

Now, my machine is gone, i’m gonna remove the disk n try to format it.

Well, what i want to know what does that error mean, does it mean my opensuse boot partition should be less than 128 gb, what i’m reading is kind of very confusing, such as in these links,

128 gb boot error

what i did not understand in this link was,
**If you have room for a small /boot partition that is still under 128GB from the beginning of the disk (not under 128GB in size), then make that during the install. **

opensuse 11.3 installation gives me grub error with 128GB limit

In here they say for new BIOS you can ignore this problem, but mine is a new one, and it still did not function.

boot loader below 128GB?

These were some of the links, so can someone help me out what does this mean, boot partition should be less than 128 gb, does this mean that my c: drive and my linux boot partition, in total should be less than 128 gb, will i be able to install opensuse on 220 gb, honestly speaking i jus go with the default configuration during linux installation, if somethin needs to be changed at that time, please help me with it, and do i have to shrink my c: drive further help me with that too… thanking advance… :’(

#2

The moment i shutdown the machine and tried to restart it, i codn’t even move beyond the boot screen, i tried to press F2 to go to the setup page, F12 to change the boot order, computer froze none worked.

Perhaps tap the key continuously immediately after boot/reboot starts, you need to get there before the boot loader begins loading.

The 128gb boot loader message is just that, a message, some older BIOSes may have an issue, yours shouldn’t.
Can you boot from a liveCD and as su - show us

fdisk -l

please use code tags.

#3

Also from the liveCD can you navigate to /boot/grub/menu.lst of the installed system and post the contents here in code tags.

#4

HI henry, thanks for the reply, no i’ve tried everything, its not even starting. it just gets stuck at the black screen.

I’ve tried tapping the key continuously, it’ll show entering setup and it’ll freeze there. Then when i press key, pressing any key makes a super loud beep. Can u tell me what this 128 gb thing is exactly in simple terms. :expressionless:

#5

HI henry, thanks for the reply, no i’ve tried everything, its not even starting. it just gets stuck at the black screen.

You can’t even boot a liveCD?

#6

It could be graphics ?

Did you read the openSUSE-11.4 release notes ? ie Did you try booting with the boot code ‘nomodeset’ ?

Did you try booting with the boot code ‘x11failsafe’ ?

Did you try booting by selecting the FailSafe option?

I can’t be more specific without knowing what graphic hardware is in your lenovo g560. Is it a hybrid graphic laptop with 2 graphic devices ? Does it have only one graphic device ? What is/are the graphic device(s) ? I’ve read it could be an Integrated Media 4500MHD or even a nVida GeForce G310M (or both if hybrid). http://www.linlap.com/wiki/lenovo+g560

If it is a hybrid graphic PC it could be tricky, and IMHO your best bet there is to go into BIOS and try to switch OFF one of the graphic devices.

But this is all speculation without further guidance from you.

#7

I’ve tried tapping the key continuously, it’ll show entering setup and it’ll freeze there. Then when i press key, pressing any key makes a super loud beep.
Have you tried powering it down completely, walking away for 5 minutes then rebooting? It may sound silly but I have had some unexpected results when some data is still in RAM (yes, that’s a long shot, but?).

Can u tell me what this 128 gb thing is exactly in simple terms. :expressionless:
This quote by @iwfinger from one of the links you provided probably explains better than I can

The warning is there because the disk driver in some BIOS codes cannot read
above that boundary. Newer machines do not have this restriction and yours
should not, but Linux tries to work on all machines.

#8

I’ve tried tapping the key continuously, it’ll show entering setup and it’ll freeze there.

You are talking about entering BIOS setup?, Aren’t you?

#9

Hi oldcpu, it is having jus one graphic device, to show u the configuration, the device has to atleast move a bit, i cannot get past BIOS screen, the laptop freezes then n there no matter wat i try. And i would like to tell you, when i installed opensuse 11.4, it worked, i was able to work on it very well, the moment i restarted the machine, it never worked.

#10

Hi oldcpu and henry, you’ve gone through all the details i’ve mentioned there, i would like to mention few things, that you should consider:

  1. Graphics is not a problem, coz it worked pretty well.
  2. Please consider that error, 128 gb one, coz it seems like BIOS is not able to detect harddrive after that and it seemed to me as if BIOS crashed (I don’t know if this term really exists or not).
  3. If i reformat the machine by moving the harddisk to someother machine n formatting it, i’m sure, i’ll be able to restore the things. But, the answer to that 128 gb not being supported by BIOS remains unanswered. What is that issue and how to get past it.
#11

The grub boot loader does NOT rewrite your BIOS code,

If i reformat the machine by moving the harddisk to someother machine n formatting it, i’m sure, i’ll be able to restore the things.
Sorry, but no, if you have a BIOS problem (or a hardware problem that is causing the BIOS to not be able to complete its job ), then reformatting the disk will make no difference.

But, the answer to that 128 gb not being supported by BIOS remains unanswered. What is that issue and how to get past it.
OK, I will chase up the details for you, but this is common and not the cause of your problem.

#12

Anyone facing this issue, please check out this article… Installing SUSE Linux - Part 2

#13

If it freezes at the BIOS screen and if you never get a grub boot menu (nor any associated error messages) then this is most likely NOT an openSUSE problem but rather a hardware problem that co-incidentally appeared at the same time.

Are you certain there is no error message, nor computer sequence of beeps that you have not mentioned to us?

You were asked a couple of times if you can boot to a liveCD. … I do not see your answer. … I hope you understand that if you do not answer our questions (which mostly you have not answered many) than its not possible to help you. Apologies for that situation - but that simply is the way it is with help threads. One needs to provide information in order to get accurate help.

#14

Hi oldcpu, sorry i did not see the second page has started, I have answere all the questions, u asked me abt the livecd, well, and i told you that i can jus see the blackscreen, thats it, it asks me press F2 to enter the bios setup and F12 for changing the boot options, I pressed F2 it showed me entering set up, and then nothing happened for the whole night. same was the case with F12 thing, so tehre is no chance i could run anything. I mentioned in my very first post, that after the screeen froze n i pressed keys all that i could hear was loud beeps, loud beeps were heard only after i pressed any key.

I read that article too, i’m jus pasting some content from it, i hope its legal.

**SUSE needs to know which partition to boot from. For this reason, SUSE uses the GRUB boot loader. Unlike the Windows boot loader, which always installs into the Master Boot Record (MBR), the 1st sector on the hard drive, GRUB can be installed on any partition.

SUSE installer is smart and will make the right choice of the hard drive where to install the boot loader. I strongly suggest people with little Linux experience to refrain from using the Expert Options, because they might inadvertently mess things up.

Nevertheless, here are some basic concepts that you should be aware of:

Some older BIOSes are limited to reading only the first 1024 sectors of a hard disk. In this case, if you install the boot loader above the 1024th sector (on one of the partitions), you will not be able to boot your Linux. This means that you might have to consider on which partition to place the boot loader (< 1024th sector). Or alternatively, create a small separate boot partition.

Without going into too many technical details, the GRUB boot loader consists of stages. Stage 1 is written to the MBR, appended to the existing information contained there. Stage 2 usually resides on the root partition of the Linux distribution.

This means that the boot loader might be overwritten any time you write new information to the Master Boot Record. If you’re using only SUSE on your machine, this will not bother you. However, if you intend to run SUSE in, let’s say, a dual-boot configuration with Windows, this might have implications:

•If you use Windows Recovery Console to fix the Master Boot Record for some reason or reinstall Windows, you will destroy the GRUB boot loader.
•If you use imaging backup software capable of reading and writing MBR, when restoring a partition, you might destroy the GRUB boot loader.**

#15

I’ve formatted my harddrive and deleted both windows n opensuse partition. I did the installation of windows using recovery partition i did not delete that. Now i again have a 552 gb partition and i’ll be trying again to install opesuse 11.4 on it, by shrinking c: drive by 200 gb, but now wat i want to ask you all, shall i shrink c: drive to 100 / 70 gb and create a separate d: drive. trying it all over again, if u want me to try out something that may help u in helping me out. please let me know. and what all details you need to solve this problem. thanks

#16

Before trying ANY openSUSE install, I recommend you attempt to boot from the openSUSE liveCD again. If that fails, then do not proceed with the openSUSE install, but rather try to figure out why the openSUSE liveCD boot fails.

#17

Cool i’ll do that, and let you know, i’m sure it’ll work, well hope so… :slight_smile:

#18

But, the answer to that 128 gb not being supported by BIOS remains unanswered. What is that issue and how to get past it.
[Bug 671085] New: bootloader error from opensuse 11.3 (bug 638232) conti](http://lists.suse.com/opensuse-bugs/2011-02/msg01667.html)

And follow the links.

#19

OLDCPU… the livecd works perfectly fine… now what shod i do, install opensuse?

#20

dvhenry did you notice that, in his case he was straight away taken to wins 7, but in my case the boot screen jus froze, had i had the option to proceed i would have really got into the details, the situation was similar to jamming, when u cannot even select from where to boot n enter the bios setup, how can i get into the details, shall i report this as a bug?