Augh… borked the bootloader by my own doing. Here’s the story:
When I got this machine, I had a single HDD. I partitioned it with a primary partition for Windows, followed by an extended partition with swap, /home/ and /, as well as a FAT32 partition for “general” data. (this was before NTFS write support was common)
This worked well with the Win2K install. Eventually, I added a second HDD, which became part data storage, and part Windows XP install. I eventually put Win7 on it, and pulled the other HDD during setup so that the boot order of the drives determines whether I boot Win7/XP or get GRUB.
However, my “data” partition was not visible in Win7… It shows up as an unknown FS in the disk management.
OK, I thought. I used Paragon partitioning software to move the “data” partition out of the extended partition and make it a primary. I could now access it from Win7. I didn’t realize I had GRUB set to boot from the extended partition, so now when I boot from that HDD, I get “no operating system”.
No problem, I thought. I’ll pop in the install CD (NET), use it to boot the installed 11.3, and run the boot loader setup. Nope- setup just hangs.
Tried it with an 11.2 DVD… doing a “boot installed system” nets me a few moments of searching, “evaluating root partition”, and then “no valid linux install found”. Trying the boot loader reinstall from there nets me an “error changing to target environment” and the install fails.
I can still mount the / partition via rescue mode and all files appear to be intact, so I don’t think I’ve lost any data… just grub/the MBR is borked. I’ve already moved the data partition back in to the extended partition in the hope that it would help… but no luck. Still the same story… thus I’m stuck booting Windows until I fix this.
Not sure what you mean- I tried that, and I can’t boot the installed system, and trying a new bootloader from the install CD fails with an error and “cannot switch to target system”.
I thought I explained that in my first post?
You could try the SuperGrub disk to see whether it can find and boot the Linux root on drive number two. Then there might be problems where the config in openSUSE expects to find partitions on drive sda but it’s now drive sdb.
Or you could switch the bios booting sequence back to make drive #2 back into drive #1, boot into Suse and add an entry into the Grub bootloader to boot into new windows on the second drive.
OK, found part of the problem- I was trying to rescue with a 32-bit install media, while the install is 64-bit… Didn’t stop to think about that.
I can now boot the system using the ‘Boot installed system’ command, but running yast bootloader and setting the options (Also pressed ‘write bootloader code to disk’) doesn’t do anything.
I also ran grub-install, which failed, so I manually started the grub shell and ran
setup stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0,6) (hd0,6), which was successful… but still no grub on boot.
What’s the exact sequence of commands to install grub from scratch? I’m going to change it to boot from the ROOT partition instead of the extended partition now (root is (hd0,6)) to avoid this in the future.
If I am reading correctly, you have MS’s boot code in the MBR ?
Still the same story… thus I’m stuck booting Windows until I fix this.
MS’s boot code can not boot directly to a logical volume only to a primary or the Extended partition. (only partitions listed in the MBR) So you must put grub into the MBR or extended partition. Installing grub stage1 to ‘hd0,6’ will not work. If you install grub to the extended partition make sure it is marked Active ’ bootable’.
If more help is needed it might to time to see the output from ‘fdisk -l’ “-l is a small L” and explain what each partition is.
I think you can install a program ‘easy bcd’ on Win7 and it will boot grub installed onto ‘hd0,6’. (?) Think that is the correct program name but have never used it.
> MS’s boot code can not boot directly to a logical volume only to a
> primary or the Extended partition. (only partitions listed in the MBR)
> So you must put grub into the MBR or extended partition. Installing grub
> stage1 to ‘hd0,6’ will not work.
I have a working system in which the MBR is generic (windows 7 original), grub is in the extended
partition (the container), and linux /boot is in number 5. There is another grub in number 9.
Ie, grub can be put in a logical partition if another grub in mbr or primary starts it.
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Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Elessar))