I want to uninstall suse, as it is not loading properly. I loaded it from windows and was stil able to use windows, which was great.Nex day after doing a repair from the install menu, I was then unable to access windows. After some time on this forum I found that the file menu.lst had changed to menu.lst.old. This was great, I renamed the new menu.lst to menu.lst.new and put back the original menu.lst and once again I could access windows.
Trying to under stand the command that was in the menu file to load windows I thought I would have a look at it in the file editor Gedit. When i tried to view these files it refused me access, but must have changed something as now I can not even get in to suse GUI at all let alone windows. I can only get in to a terminal or shell. Further investigation shows that both files in /boot/grub have the same time and date on them and none of them are from the original install time and date.I have retried the repair tool several tines to no avail, so please tell me is it possible to uninstall suse and maybe start again.
or
Is there a way I can edit menu.lst from the terminal shell and then get back the GUI
No need to reinstall SuSE so far.
Read the manual GNU GRUB Manual 0.97
Whatever GRUB would have to do following menu.lst, you can do intelligently and interactively.
Do you, by any chance, have access to a Linux Live CD? If you can boot one and get onto the internet, that would make this considerably easier, because we can then examine menu.lst and the arrangement of partitions on the PC, and fix the boot menu.
All is not lost if you haven’t… It just makes things easier.
…
Although, what happens if you log in to the terminal using your normal username, then type ‘startx’?
Or if that doesn’t work…
su -
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
exit
[you maybe have to log in again as normal user here]
startx
I have a linux opensuse 11 installation dvd. not sure if this will boot live. As for running startx fron the terminal. I thought it was going to work then i got a window in the top left hand corner stating “could not start kdeinit4. Check your installation”
Load suse, log in as root, then type ‘fdisk -l’ and write down what appears. Don’t worry about the numbers - we only need the indentifiers (like sda1) and the filesystem types (ntfs, ext3, whatever…)
Then type ‘cat /boot/grub/menu.lst | more’ and copy down the section related to Windows - it’s only a few lines long, and it should be pretty obvious which bit it is.
Hopefully with this information we can get Windows to load, then you can worry about dealing with suse…
/dev/sda1 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 W95 Ext’d (LMA)
/dev/sda5 Linux swap / solaris
/dev/sda6 Linux swap / solaris
/dev/sda7 Linux
/dev/sda8 Linux
Here are the results of fdisk -l
There was no windows related section when running cat /boot/grub/menu.lst . Only OPENsuse 11.0 and Failsafe – OPENsuse I guess this is because the option for windows dose not appear in the boot menu. During a repaiar I am asked to manually repair the boot file and could enter the correct details if I knew them and where to browse for them.
As for the md5sum and media check, I havn’t a clue what they are but I did install instlux in windows then install OPENsuse and finally uninstall instlux from window.
Then add the following lines to the end, without changing anything else;
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
Save, exit, then at the prompt;
/sbin/shutdown -r now
to reboot, hopefully you’ll be able to get into Windows. Have a read of this sticky, or google for md5sum. If your md5sum is wrong, or you got a bad burn, it could explain things.
Yes I am sure I have entered it as you suggested. I have tried it again today with the same result. I have also tried the cp command then enter, then nano command separately which returns the following Bash: nano: command not found.
I am assuming there is a space between .bak and nano?
Ah, sorry - those are two separate lines, so yes, you should type each one separately with a return in between.
:\ I thought nano was installed by default, apparently it isn’t. You can use vi, it’s just a little trickier. If you do the same thing, logged in as root and all, then type
vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
Then you’ll be in vi. Vi is a bit strange to the uninitiated. There are two modes you need to know about, insert mode and command mode - if there’s a colon ‘:’ printed at the bottom of the screen you’re in command mode, and if it says --insert-- you’re in insert.
First scroll down to them bottom with the arrow keys. Now press ‘i’. Type the stuff you need to type, and press ‘Esc’. Now press ‘:’, and at the colon prompt, type ‘wq’ and hit return.
If you go wrong anywhere, press escape until it’s back to ‘normal’ mode, then press ‘:’, and just type ‘q!’. That will quit without saving, and you can reload it and start again. Take your time - vi is really confusing.
Yes! Yes! Yes! thankyou Confuseling, I now have windows. It feels great to have it back.
As you are a true hero, can you now tell me how I can get the OPENsuse GUI to open when I chose OPENsuse from the boot menu. at the moment it just boots into a Terminal or shell.
when I insalled OPENsuse I opted for KDE4 desktop. I then found that I could swap to the Gnome desktop by insalling it and then selecting it from the startup options page. This has also disappeared, which is probably why I can not get a GUI of any description and can only get in to a shell. Any idea on how to get these options back would be great
Did you download the DVD? If so, first suggestion is google for ‘check md5sum’ and try to do that on the ISO you used to see if it’s alright.
Secondly, try booting from the DVD, and see if it’s got a ‘media check’ option (I think it should have…?). Run that as well.
After that, you may have to recruit some more expert help… I’m pretty new here myself. It may also be the case that now that you know how to get SUSE to boot Windows, it would be easier to just reinstall… It’s not an elegant solution, but if your suse partition is new and doesn’t have a lot of data on it, and you’re not that familiar with suse, it may be quicker and easier… Problem is that without knowing what you did to break it, it’s tricky to know how to fix it.
You mentioned trying startx before, but you maybe didn’t see the bit that I edited onto my message afterwards…? Log in as root, then
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
exit
then log back in as normal user, then try ‘startx’ again? If nothing, maybe type ‘cat ~/.xsession-errors’ and see what that says - it might give you a clue why it isn’t loading.
Also, I note that you have two swap partitions - that’s unusual, and you probably only want one (people often suggest twice the size of your ram, but opinions vary). That can quite easily be fixed on a running system, but again, if you have no particular reason not to reinstall, that’s an easy way to sort it out as well…
