Hi,
Situation: System unable to boot from harddrive. Unable to create openSUSE install DVD due to lack of DVDwriter.
Goal: Get at least the Windows XP installation back. openSUSE may get lost for this goal
What i did: Installed Windows XP-> Installed openSUSE via network (booted from “network-install-CD”)->booted from harddisc to openSUSE, Windows XP, openSUSE again (several times, everything fine until here) -> decided to make Windows XP the default boot option, and until i changed that little option in YAST->Boot Loader my system is unable to boot from that harddrive.
What i did to solve that “mishap”:
- booted from Windows XP install CD->Repair Console->FIXMBR, FIXBOOT, BOOTCFG /REBUILD -> no goal achieved.
- booted from “network-install-CD” -> no option to “get things working again” in boot menu -> no goal achieved.
- downloaded openSUSE live-cd and booted it -> no option to “get things working again” in boot menu -> no goal achieved.
- live-cd: YAST->Boot loader->Write new MBR and stuff and now things got even worse: YAST-Boot loader comes up with some message “Because of the partitioning of the harddrive the boot loader cannot be installed properly”
When booting from live-cd i can see the Windows XP NTFS Partition with the files on it and also i can see the openSUSE partitions with /boot/grub and stuff, but i couldn’t find a way to get that harddrive boot again. I could backup the most important things to another harddrive, but i would really know the solution to this problem. I had 20gb unpartitioned space on my harddrive when i installed openSUSE and everything went EXTREMELY well, i could boot into both OS’es without any problems, the ext3 partitions where created and stuff, but when i changed the “default os” option in YAST this is what happened.
Hope someone can help.
greets from germany,
Boot from the live cd and re-install would be my advice.
When you arrive at the install summary, click on ‘Booting’ - in that section click the advanced tab and make sure only the Boot from MBR is checked.
Then run the install
Check out sverdna’s sticky Fixing vista multiboot with openSUSE - openSUSE Forums
This is probably due to the boot record not being in the mbr, as caf4926 pointed out. I had a similar problem after changing drives, but it wasn’t necessary to reinstall opensuse, just correct the boot record location. See Fixing vista multiboot with openSUSE - openSUSE Forums (same title as the sticky, but a different thread).
I think those guides assume a working openSUSE installation. But i will try and tell if it’s working.
Oh my god, i cant believe it. Cant believe that i couldn’t figure THAT out by myself. I am currently logged in in my Windows XP so i booted from harddrive and the old boot menu was back. All i had to do was this:
- Boot Live CD
- YAST->Boot loader-> hit “Propose and Merge from existing blabla” (sorry winXP here, i cant tell exact strings) and hit ->“Write configuration to disc”.
- reboot
Ok here the exact manual to solve that problem, if anyone has the same problem and manages to find this thread.
- Boot Live CD
- YaST -> System -> Boot loader
- “Other…” → “Propose and Merge with Existing GRUB menus” (it should read as your old boot menu now)
- “Other…” → “Write Bootloader Boot Code to Disk”
- reboot, take care of CD drive and boot sequence in bios and so on
It even changed the default the way i wanted it, so i dont have ANY clue what went wrong when this ***** didnt boot any more.
You hit parted bug, which cause zeroed boot code of extended partition. This should be fixed by current maintenance updates (both yast2-bootloader, which doesn’t call parted if it is not necessary and parted, which stop zeroing boot code from extended partition).