I am new to openSUSE, and Linux in general. I recently installed Linux on a 2nd HDD on my machine. I disconnected my main HDD, b/c I wanted to make sure I didn’t overwrite anything. Both Linux and XP boot just fine, if only their respective HDDs are connected. But if both are connected, my system only sees Linux, and boots openSUSE, and not WinXP. I’ve read a little about a GRUB file that needs to be configured, but have no clue on how to do that. Any help would be appreciated!
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Post the contents of /boot/grub/menu.lst if you can, please. You’ll
likely need to add a section like the following for windows so it below
the Linux section:
<quote>
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
</quote>
Good luck.
dvsone79 wrote:
> I am new to openSUSE, and Linux in general. I recently installed Linux
> on a 2nd HDD on my machine. I disconnected my main HDD, b/c I wanted to
> make sure I didn’t overwrite anything. Both Linux and XP boot just
> fine, if only their respective HDDs are connected. But if both are
> connected, my system only sees Linux, and boots openSUSE, and not WinXP.
> I’ve read a little about a GRUB file that needs to be configured, but
> have no clue on how to do that. Any help would be appreciated!
>
>
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Also,
You don’t need to disconnect drives. In fact it only makes things difficult, as you will find devices are not configured or mounted as you would like.
as already said post contents of:
/boot/grub/menu.lst
my xp entry is
title WIN XP
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
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It should be mentioned that, as long as you are careful during the
installation of SUSE (or most user-friendly distros anymore really) if
you have both drives connected and only install on the right one the
install will see your windows installation and setup grub for it
automatically and usually work immediately. Disconnecting doesn’t give
the installer that chance, though, so you need to hack it manually. The
downside to leaving them connected is if you mess up you could do
something bad, but the SUSE installer is pretty smart and tells you
which drive is which regardless.
Good luck.
caf4926 wrote:
> Also,
> You don’t need to disconnect drives. In fact it only makes things
> difficult, as you will find devices are not configured or mounted as you
> would like.
>
> as already said post contents of:
> /boot/grub/menu.lst
>
> my xp entry is
>
> title WIN XP
> map (hd0) (hd1)
> map (hd1) (hd0)
> rootnoverify (hd1,0)
> chainloader +1
>
>
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It sounds like the openSUSE drive is configured in the bios as the first boot device. Your XP drive is either configured as the second boot drive, or the bios just looks for another bootable drive by default when the configured device is not found (some bios’s do, some don’t).
You can control the boot from the bios if you wish. Either by changing the config in the bios setup, or some bios’s allow changing the boot device on-the-fly (you would see something like “press <key> to see boot menu” or “press <x> to choose boot device”). You can also boot from openSUSE to XP or the reverse; the former is usually easier to set up. If you want to dual boot from openSUSE, get into openSUSE, open a terminal window, switch to root (the “su” command), and do:
fdisk -l -u
cat /boot/grub/device.map
cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
cat /etc/grub.conf
Copy/paste the output of each command back here, and we’ll give you a suggestion for the setup.
If you want to dual boot controlling it from XP, that is a bit more involved. We would still need the output of fdisk above to give you those instructions.
And, are either of your drives an external? If so, what type? Is the machine a laptop?