I recently installed Win XP on my notebook originally running on openSUSE 11.0. I created a 10 GB space at the end of /dev/sda and installed XP on it, which at the end started with no problem (but not linux). Then, using the installation DVD I booted to openSUSE and reinstalled grub in the MBR including windows in it. Now if I start up my machine the selection list comes up with no problem, openSUSE boots nicely, but if I choose windows from the boot menu it just doesn’t boot, it just brings back the selection menu with no error message. Reading this link GRUB Boot Multiboot openSUSE Windows (2000, XP, Vista) using the Grub bootloader. I learned, that my problem may be that windows is not installed on the first partition. Is that a way to get around this and make both of my OSs working?
my partitions according to fdisk -l are:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 262 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 263 2873 20972857+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2874 13278 83578162+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 13279 14593 10562737+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
and here is my menu.lst:
Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Tue Jan 20 20:42:02 CET 2009
You don’t have to reinstall grub when you edit menu.lst. How about trying
title windows
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader (hd0,3)+1
Also, your second partition is marked bootable. While linux does not care which one is marked, windows might. Login as root and type
sfdisk /dev/sda -A4
followed by
sfdisk /dev/sda -l
The windows partition should now be marked. This won’t affect linux but might help windows.
If it still does not work with same problem do the below.
from post by “mingus725”
I am going to give you several commands. These need need to be done as root in a terminal window. The dd command will copy the sectors, the xxd command will do a hex dump of the copy.
I must emphasize that the dd command must be done precisely. If you make a typo mistake, you could destroy something permanently. (Also note the dash/minus sign after the su; that will put you and the files in the /root subdirectory.)
You could boot XP before installing GRUB ?
If yes- what I want to find out with the above code and post if perhaps grub stage1 was also install on sda4.
Also, I backed up my home directory and settings, so I would start from scratch by installing windows on /dev/sda1 and linux on the rest if I’d be sure that it would work.
0000180: .GRUB .Geom.Hard
from the XP’s Volume Boot Record (VBR).
For what ever reason GURB stage 1 was install into the first sector (VBR)of the the XP partition. The VBR must contain the boot code for the OS’s that installed on the partition.
You need to boot into XP’s recovery console and run fixboot, that and the menu.lst modification should fix all your problems.