Dual Booting Suse 11.1 & Windows 7

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi guys! Windows 7 seems very picky about GRUB and I can’t install Suse after I have installed Windows 7. On the other hand, Mandriva 2009 will let me put GRUB in the master boot record of my second hard drive so now I can choose to boot my first hard drive and use W7 or boot the second one and use Mandriva.

What I really want is to drop Mandriva and revert to Suse and Windows but I don’t seem to be able to make Suse’s version of GRUB write its bootloader specifically to the MBR of the 2nd HD.

Am I not understanding Suse’s GRUB options or is there anything else I can do?

#2

You should drop Windows 7 and only install openSUSE :stuck_out_tongue:

In my openSUSE 11.0 there’s an option called “Write generic Code in MBR” in the “Boot Loader Installation” section. It is also mentioned here.
Probably you have to edit the Boot Loader Options when Installing openSUSE and activate this checkbox.

Good Luck and stay with openSUSE :slight_smile:

#3

I didn’t find any problem with Windows 7.

My partitions, as shown by ‘fdisk -l’ are

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 9727 78132096 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 9728 12159 19535040 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 12160 36474 195310237+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 * 36475 48226 94397940 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 36475 37780 10490413+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 37781 43003 41953716 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 43004 48226 41953716 83 Linux

My mounted partitions, as shown by ‘df’ are:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 41294832 4310864 34886284 11% /
/dev/sda7 41294832 1775400 37421748 5% /data1
/dev/sda3 195214872 46705716 148509156 24% /home
/dev/sda1 78132092 15676768 62455324 21% /windows/C

Of course, Windows 7 is in /dev/sda1. My /etc/grub.conf is

setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force-lba (hd0,5) (hd0,5)
quit

I installed Windows 7 after openSUSE 11.1 was installed. Of course, it overwrote
the MBR. I then booted a rescue disk and ran the following commands:

grub-install /dev/sda
grub-install /dev/sda6

I then added the following stanza to /boot/grub/menu.lst:

Windows

title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

As far as I can tell, this is exactly the sequence needed for Vista.

Larry

#4

@MikeyOT -

If you are booting from sda and have it configured for boot in the bios, then openSUSE will see the sda MBR as the target for installing grub (assuming you want grub in an MBR). But if you want to boot using the sdb MBR, which is to say, you will switch the bios setup to boot from sdb, then in YaST Boot Loader click on Other, click on Edit Config Files, and in the next screen edit device.map to align grub’s (hd0) with sdb. Click OK and back on the previous screen check the box for installing to the MBR. Go back to Edit Config Files and double-check /etc/grub.conf - it should show grub being installed to (hd0) which is now the sdb MBR.

Alternatively, use the W7 boot manager to boot linux on sdb. It is very easy to set up with EasyBCD. Just install grub to the root partition boot sector. Then in EasyBCD add an entry to the W7 boot registry pointing to that partition.