I’m running suse 11.3 gnome and it’s running great but I need to boot into windows. I did have a windows partition on it but in my infinite wisdom a while back I tried to remove linux and thought I could just delete it.
I’m started getting a grub error 22 message and from reading forums it suggested fixing my mbr with windows recovery disk. I don’t have that disk as it was pre-installed on my laptop. When I switch on my laptop listed is opensuse 11.3 and windows. When I click windows it tries to start fades and I get what looks like a blue screen with text but it’s gone quickly.
Basically I can get into linux no problem but can’t fix the windows partition. I wouldn’t bother only college are insisting on a software which only runs on windows ArcGIS. Any suggestions to possible solutions or is it out to buy a new laptop?
On 02/10/2011 12:06 PM, casperg wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> I’m running suse 11.3 gnome and it’s running great but I need to boot
> into windows. I did have a windows partition on it but in my infinite
> wisdom a while back I tried to remove linux and thought I could just
> delete it.
>
> I’m started getting a grub error 22 message and from reading forums it
> suggested fixing my mbr with windows recovery disk. I don’t have that
> disk as it was pre-installed on my laptop. When I switch on my laptop
> listed is opensuse 11.3 and windows. When I click windows it tries to
> start fades and I get what looks like a blue screen with text but it’s
> gone quickly.
>
> Basically I can get into linux no problem but can’t fix the windows
> partition. I wouldn’t bother only college are insisting on a software
> which only runs on windows ArcGIS. Any suggestions to possible solutions
> or is it out to buy a new laptop?
At this point, it is not clear what may be wrong with Windows, but you can
provide some help.
First of all, run these two commands:
sudo /sbin/fdisk -l
sudo cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
When you post the output, please place it inside “code” tags the way I did. That
will preserve the formatting.
You can also try to see if ArcGIS will run inside wine.
A final option before buying a new computer would be to install Windows XP in a
VirtualBox virtual machine hosted by openSUSE. That is what I do for the two
programs that I use that need Windows. This option does require an XP
installation disk, but that should be easy to find and should not be too expensive.
Before buying a new laptop, I would check with everyone on your floor or whole dorm to see if they have windows disks. If they do and the versions (xp 32-bit, etc) match, you’re still in business. If not, I’d also check with your college’s tech desk to see if they will do an mbr repair.
Apologies for delay in getting back and thanks for the replies I really appreciate it. I tried several recovery disks from various people with no success. I did d/l a version of windows xp and I tried repairing the mdr but received an error couldn’t find installed hard drive.
Below output from commands.
linux-5uh2:/ # sbin/fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0bc90bc8
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 7123 57207465 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 7123 19457 99080856 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 7123 7384 2104452 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 7385 9995 20972826 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 9996 19457 76003483+ 83 Linux
linux-5uh2:/ # cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Wed Feb 2 11:12:20 GMT 2011
# THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader
# Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,5)/boot/message
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34.7-0.7 (default)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-0.7-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK1652G_78AFF4QBS-part6 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_MK1652GSX_78AFF4QBS-part5 splash=silent showopts vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34.7-0.7-default
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34.7-0.7 (default)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-0.7-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK1652G_78AFF4QBS-part6 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume edd=off x11failsafe nomodeset vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34.7-0.7-default
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34.7-0.7
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-0.7-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK1652G_78AFF4QBS-part6 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-TOSHIBA_MK1652GSX_78AFF4QBS-part5 splash=silent showopts vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34.7-0.7-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34.7-0.7 (desktop)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34.7-0.7-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_TOSHIBA_MK1652G_78AFF4QBS-part6 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume edd=off x11failsafe nomodeset vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34.7-0.7-desktop
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Floppy
rootnoverify (fd0)
chainloader +1
I’m surprised to see Toshiba in the output but I do know one of the recovery disks I tried to use was from a Toshiba.
I do not see anything wrong with the information that you posted. That means that Windows is bad now if it does not load. Since openSUSE is working, I must assume you have loaded the grub bootloader into the MBR. If you remove or over write this, then nothing will work. I feel that to get Windows back, you will need to reload Windows and may need to delete all of openSUSE as well. The setup that you have should have worked OK, but it looks like you zapped Windows for some reason I don’t understand. When you load/reload Windows, it may not work until you remove all of the Linux Partitions because it does not understand them. Some utilities allow you to hide partitions, but really at this point you have to decide just how important it is to use Windows or openSUSE. If you need both, you most likely will need to reload both, after removing it all and finding a full fledged Windows installation disk that can be registered.
Thanks for your reply it’s a help to know windows is fried. It will stop me messing around trying to get it to work. I’m a big fan of suse and wouldn’t even consider windows unless it was necessary.