I’m a newb to linux so I figured I’d post here. I’ve searched throught he forums extensively and haven’t been able to figure out how to solve my problems. I’ve been messing around with the boot loader and have probably made things worse. This is what I’ve done:
I have two harddrives. This first is 750 gigs and it has vista installed on it. Today, I hooked another harddrive up to my computer (80 gigs) and installed suse 11 kde on it. I was hoping that booting up to one or the other would be easy. However, I can’t access vista at all now. After messing around with it a bit I now get a screen that comes up and asks if I want to boot to Windows, openSuse, or openSuse (failsafe). If I select openSuse everything works fine. However, if I select windows I get a screen that comes up and says:
rootnoverify (hd 1,1)
chainloader (hd 0,0)+1
How do I fix this?
Is there a way to make it so that my computer automatically boots up with Vista as fast as it usually does or will there always be a screen asking me which boot I want?
At this point I just want to uninstall Suse and get Vista working again. However, if I just unplug the Suse harddrive I get the following error:
GRUB Loading Stage 1.5
GRUB Loading, please wait
Error 21
At the very least I want to be able to use Vista. How do I fix this? Is GRUB something that Suse loaded in my Bios? How do I just return to being able to actually use my computer?
Hi jstnc. Welcome to the openSUSE Forums. Looks like you’re a bit nervous about losing vista.
How do I fix this?
The Grub config file is “menu.lst” located at /boot/grub/menu.lst. It’s a text file. Open it up in a text editor and change this:
rootnoverify (hd 1,1)
chainloader (hd 0,0)+1
to this
rootnoverify (hd 0,0)
chainloader (hd 0,0)+1
To get it open in a GUI text editor (with administrator powers) open a terminal window/console and enter this command:
kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst
edit and save and exit.
Is there a way to make it so that my computer automatically boots up with Vista as fast as it usually does or will there always be a screen asking me which boot I want?
While you’ve got the menu.lst file ope, change the value of “timeout” to maybe 4 (seconds) the it will boot faster. Also the entry/line beginning “default” points to the entry in the list that gets booted by default. Change the number to the entry for vista and it will boot by default in the number of seconds you chose (e.g. 4).
At this point I just want to uninstall Suse and get Vista working again.
Unplug the usb drive and use the vista repair function like this:
Insert the Vista installation disk and proceed to the final screen where you have the option to Repair Your Computer. Select Repair but do not opt for the automatic repair plus restart. Instead select Next and then select the Command Prompt. Enter bootrec.exe /FixMbr in the console and follow that with the command exit. Then select to reboot.
But I suggest you try the others first so you can play with Suse before you exit Linux.
However, if I just unplug the Suse harddrive I get the following error:
That’s because you installed Suse incorrectly. Let me know if you want to fix it (i.e. if you want to keep Suse).
Thanks for your help! I didn’t do the first part because at that point I just wanted Suse off my computer and I wanted to get back into Vista so I could back up my files. I did the part where you said, “Instead select Next and then select the Command Prompt. Enter bootrec.exe /FixMbr in the console and follow that with the command exit.” That’s what I was missing. I had only read people saying that they used the FixMbr command but when I was opening the command prompt and typing fixmbr without the bootrec.exe I was just getting errors.
I am able to get back into Windows now. I really want to play around with Linux, though. I was getting frustrated because it wouldn’t let me back in Windows and I couldn’t even figure out how to load any drivers. I was trying to use the disk that came with my motherboard to install the drivers but it didn’t autorun and when I was clicking on the setup.exe file Suse was coming up with a window that was asking me which program I wanted to use to open the .exe. I had never seen that before. It was very frustrating.
I’m not going to do it today but I think I will reinstall it sometime soon. What would I have done wrong that gave me the problems?
…asking me which program I wanted to use to open the .exe. I had never seen that before.
Exe files are a new fangled microsoft invention AFAIK. Linux uses the proper form for executable files and doesn’t know what an exe file is. It will never use them IMO (malware problems).
I’m not going to do it today but I think I will reinstall it sometime soon. What would I have done wrong that gave me the problems?
The code that Grub laid into the Master Boot Record of the vista drive pointed straight to the menu.lst file I spoke about. thus when you boot sans the second drive it can’t find it and gets perplexed as you discovered.
The trick with an attached drive is to not have any reliance on it for booting vista. I can think of three ways:
Disconnect drive 1 temporarily, attach the usb drive. Computer thinks it’s drive 1 now. Install Suse. reattach drive 1. Boot normally and it goes direct to drive 1 vista. For Suse: boot computer using the F11 (or for some F8 and other F12 – whatever) that that brings up the bios boot device menu. Select drive 2 and it boot Suse.
The offender is the file menu.lst at /boot/grub/menu.lst. Make space of 100Mbytes on drive 1. Install Suse as you did before but mount the space you made as /boot. Install Suse and it will put system on drive 2 but /boot files in the space on drive 1. Thus will always find menu.lst regardless of attach usb drive or not.