Hello, I (desperately) need help in my self-inflicted crises, the background is as follows: At boot, I was informed that there were some 1500+ updates waiting.
Happily, I pushed the (Apper-)button, and then the update crashed (Reason: Vivaldi). System would not boot, so I tried to do an update by using the original 13.2 CD. So I burned a new openSuSE CD on a Win7 PC, and overlooked (shame on me!) that I got some stuff for putting Win on my computer as well. Trying to read the openSuSE disk, I am getting the message “BOOTMGR missing. Push Cntrl+Alt+Del for restart”; doing that, I am back to the message again. So at the moment I am stuck.
Now I see the following options:
Find som software that would boot from DVD or USB, thereby circumventing the “BOOTMGR …” message and allowing me to edit the MBR; how that should be done would be the next question.
Find som software that would boot from DVD or USB and allow me transferring all files to the second drive on the PC.
Hope for a good solution by the openSuSE community.
Take the disk (it is an Intel SSD) to a data recovery company.
Any help would be grately appreciated!
Jan Christian
Yes, Ver 13.2 was running flawlessly. It was (is) installed on “/dev/sdb”, that is the Intel SSD. The second disk is a rotating one, “/dev/sda”, having only one partition “sda1” formatted as NTFS, that disk contains data that I have backup of.
In other words: The problem is to get rid of the Win MBR (?), no new partitions have been generated. And I would be very happy if I could rip all data off the disk, I do not necessarily have to boot from that disk until it is reformatted and 13.2 installed again.
I am contemplating demounting the SSD and attaching it to another computer (Linux or Win) by USB and try to read the data, but am afraid of messing up;
comments and suggestions are welcome!
Okay, you have v13.2 on the SSD, which you see as sdb, but cannot boot to it at this time.
If I understand you correctly, the standard HD, showing to you as sda, does not have an operating system on it and is just one large NTFS partition full of files/data.
Is that correct?
In other words: The problem is to get rid of the Win MBR (?)
Forget that, it is misdirecting your focus. Just be patient and let us try to find out exactly what it is you are trying to do.
Are you wanting to dual boot openSUSE & Windows?
You still did not tell me if this is a dual boot system with a version of Windows installed.
Somehow, I suspect not, and somehow I suspect you do not want dual boot, but I have a headache tonight and therefore am having difficulty reading your mind at this distance – I am in Canada. Plus, my friend dropped my Fortune Teller’s globe and it shattered.
So:
Do you want the machine to be openSUSE only?
Is Windows installed or not?
While you are at it, get me the output of
fdisk -l
When pasting the output into your reply, look up at the icons above the message window, middle row, third icon from the right, is “#”.
Click on that, then paste your output between the CODE tags that will pop into your reply.
You can get that output by booting with the openSUSE install DVD, go down to the Rescue line in the menu and boot that.
When the DVD Rescue gets to the login prompt, type:
root
It will not need a password. You can then run the above fdisk command.
And I would be very happy if I could rip all data off the disk
Which disk? Which data?
I do not necessarily have to boot from that disk until it is reformatted
Again, which disk? Why do you want to reformat it?
and 13.2 installed again.
If 13.2 is installed on sdb, there is no need to install it again. In that case, it is simply a matter of fixing the boot loader.
But, before doing any of that, we need to begin with the above information I ask for … all of it.
I am contemplating demounting the SSD and attaching it to another computer (Linux or Win) by USB and try to read the data, but am afraid of messing up;
comments and suggestions are welcome!
Just stay patient and relaxed, Jan. Once we understand exactly what it is you want, we can then give you step-by-step as necessary.
Your Q#1: Yes. ‘sda’ is a data disk with data and nothing but data, this data I have backup of.
Your Q#2: I do not want a dual boot, I have no Windows on ‘sdb’ but an entry that is looking for Win xx but does not find it.
Your Q#3: Yes, I want the machine to be openSuSE only.
Your Q#4: I have no Windows installed.
I can not give you any output from ‘fdisk -l’, as I do not come farther as to “BOOTMGR missing. Push Cntrl+Alt+Del for restart”.
The machine cannot read a CD, it cannot boot from HD (I have set boot sequence accordingly); consequently, I cannot give you
any output from any linux-command (or - obviously - from any windows-command since the latter is not installed).
Your Q#5, 6 7, 8: If I can get the installed but defunct operating system functional again, that is fine with me. However, the issue
is to get all data off the ‘sdb-disk’, I can reinstall openSuSE after that if desired. Hence: #5 the disk is ‘sdb’, #6 the data on ‘sdb’, #7 the disk is ‘sdb’ with the operating system and data, #8 because I want to have a clean operating system after I have got the data off the disk.
Confusing where do you see this boot Windows option is this BIOS screen??
How are you mounting the data partition. You can not mount it as home it will not work home must be a Linux file system though you can have NTFS mounted as sub directories. But not home directores.
It is beginning to sound like that. You should be able to boot from CD/DVD. You should also be able to boot from USB. Unless, of course, you do not have a CD/DVD drive or do not have USB ports.
I am – as my friend, gogalthorp, hints at – thinking you are seeing some BIOS boot screen.
Hello, I am back after having copied all user data in triplicate and verified the correctness. I am now ready for removing everything (user data, system, …). Below I am giving you an update, I will start a new tread ‘CANNOT LOAD OPENSUSE’ after this update to this tread.
To your last question: I assumed that it would be an idea to update BIOS since the message “BOOTMGR missing. Push Cntrl+Alt+Del for restart” was in Norwegian, whereas my openSuse is all English; the data disk is is an ex Windows disk.
What I have done besides copying data is the following:
Updated BIOS and removed the ‘Windows data disk’, this gives me the login-screen with the light-bulb. Added clean SSD for slot 2.
Logged in. Got the message “Could not start kdeinit4. Check your installation”. Pushing the OK-button gives me the login screen.
Tried the ‘Custom option’; same result as 2).
Tried the ‘IceVM option’. See below.
Tried the 'KDE Plasma Workspace” option; same result as 2).
Tried the 'KDE Plasma Workspace (failsafe session)” option; same result as 2).
Tried the “Failsafe” option. Got command window; see below.
Very interesting is that setting DVD-drive as the first boot option when powering up does not take, the DVD is not read. Trying to use YaST for booting fails, the YaST2 log ends with 'YaST seems to be aborted abnormally !
Any sugestions are welcome, but for the benefit of the community, I am going to post the new tread.
