Sitting in Vista, I tossed the OpenSUSE disc in and started installing it.
When I boot the system, it gives me the two options but I havent installed the OS yet. I would prefer not to install it on this system. How can I go back and not prompt me to choose from Vista and OpenSUSE?
Hello, welcome here!
I don’t understand how you can have Grub’s menu in the master boot record of the first drive without going through the installation procedure.
But really strange things happen. OK if you’re sure that you haven’t been through the install, then the active partition is still the vista boot partition. The following won’t work if the active partition has been moved by the install process. Just toss the vista disk in. Boot of the install vista 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. That will put vista’s boot stuff back in the master boot record.
I initially started the installation while in Windows, but when it started asking about formatting and changing the partitions, I quickly cancelled it.
Is there a good way to set up a dual boot on this system without it requiring a format of the partitions? Not familiar with LVM, but I looked at it and the other option in the setup. Both required formatting the drives.
I would really like to get SUSE and Vista dual booting on this machine, but can’t worry about having to reset up the vista installation. Thanks again in advance.
I don’t see any reason to format the vista part of the drive, or any reason to use LVM. Questions: (1) how many hard drives and are they internal and/or external? (2) where are you prepared to make space to install Suse? (3) are you prepared to shrink vista’s partition from inside vista while it’s running to make space if there’s none available elsewhere?
@swerdna, does Vista support physically changing the partition it is mounted on? I didn’t know that was possible (or is it using the Norton technique, at boot before mount and load?).
I checked in a machine running vista. It accepts settings to shrink the system partition while vista is running. I haven’t pressed “apply” because it contains real data. I just assume it will cope somehow, but I can’t say from experience.
Very interesting. I searched in the MS Support kb, nothing there. But found it on TechNet. It is quite basic. And it does do its thing on-the-fly!
That means we have a good reply for folk who ask how to partition for installing Suse. It would be always to modify vista from within vista. So I must try it out and confirm that it works in the case of installing Suse. [There seems to be enough material to construct a tutorial on howto install Suse in concert with vista. Time – time – time.]