Can't boot in windows after installing opensuse

English Install/Boot/Login
1

So, I have tried to do it several times changing the configuration in the installer, but it’s always the same:

First of all, I have 3 disks on my computer (without RAID), one with data, one with windows and the last one is the one where I'm installing tumbleweed.

The problem is that after Tumbleweed is installed the windows option does not appear in the grub, so I tried to boot manually using the disk with windows, but
it prompts a message saying that is not a booteable disk (so I just reinstall windows and it works again).

My question is: what configuration should I change at install to make it detect windows instead of making it unbooteable? Or there is something I need to do first
before installing opensuse?

Thanks for the help.

2

Are you using UEFI booting? Or are you using legacy BIOS booting?

Both Windows and openSUSE must use the same booting method. Otherwise you will get the problem that you have described.

3

Hi, thanks for the reply

I’m using UEFI booting, when I boot from the usb it gives me 2 options:

  • UEFI: usb
  • usb

and I always select the first one (it’s the same booting from the usb to install windows); also the grub I’m selecting in the configuration of opensuse is grub2 for EFI.

If you are talking about changing the configuration of my BIOS UEFI, I have not checked that, so I’ll take a look at it.

4

Unplug the USB, Boot openSUSE, start YaST - System - Bootloader, and make sure “Probe foreign OS” is checked. Confirm all, reboot and check again.

5

The option was already checked; I followed the mentioned steps and still the same.

Now I have changed the boot settings of my bios to use only UEFI, so i’ll try to do the installation again. If it still the same, I’ll try installing a different distro to see what happens

6

I have reinstalled windows after changing my bios boot options to “only UEFI” and then reinstalled openSUSE, my windows disk is again unbooteable, maybe if I install windows after openSUSE I can solve the problem, but I would like to install openSUSE after windows, because I may need to reinstall linux in the future (if I break something) and I do not want to reinstall windows if that happens.

If “it should work”, I can record a video of both installations, so you can see whether I’m doing something wrong or not

7

There should be a grub menu entry to boot Windows. That’s assuming that you did not physically remove the Windows disk when installing openSUSE.

8

All the disks are always connected while installation, but I think I’ve found the problem. When I installed openSUSE last time (after windows) I checked the windows disk partitions and it has only one partition. What I’m suspecting is that windows uses the boot partition of the disk with linux, so after installing openSUSE again, this partition is overwritted and windows cannot boot anymore. Now I’ll try to install windows disconnecting the other disks and after that I will install openSUSE again.

If I solve the problem by doing this I’ll post it here, thanks for the help.

9

Well, the problem was exactly that, I selected a disk at windows installation, but it used the EFI partition of my linux disk to boot windows, so when I installed linux again this partition was modified and windows couldn’t boot anymore; by disconnecting the linux disk at windows installation it just used the selected disk and then I can install openSUSE without making windows unbooteable.

Thanks for the help, I thought the problem was openSUSE and its installation, but as always, windows was the problem.

10

That should have been fine, as long as the linux install did not reformat the EFI partition. You are supposed to be able to boot multiple systems from the one EFI partition.

However, some UEFI firmware does give problems with this, and that might be what happened. I am using two EFI partitions on my main desktop, because the firmware doesn’t like two operating systems in the same EFI partition.

In any case, I’m glad that you now have things working.