I’ve just installed the newest version of openSUSE in a machine where were instaled Windows 8 and Windows 7 in dual boot.
Before that instalation the boot was managed by Windows 8. After que instalation in the boot menu of openSUSE, there are three options:
WINDOWS 1
WINDOWS 2
WINDOWS 3
The WNDOWS 1 option, initializes the boot manager of the Windows 8, but when the manager starts there is no Windows system for choose to boot.
Before that instalation the Windows 8 boot manager offered two options for booting Windows 8 and Windows 7.
When I try to boot directly from WINDOWS 2 and WINDOWS 3 options from the openSUSE boot manager, it happens an error informing the is no operational system to boot.
Please I need help to solve that issue. I don’t want to run a boot recovery from Microsoft, because if I do that, surely I wont be able to boot to openSUSE.
So, you must realize that Windows 8 is not in final release. I can guess that the three partitions are:
/dev/sda1 (Windows 1), NTFS about 100 MB, small, primary, marked as Active, System Boot and was the starter for both Windows. You would normally select this partition from grub to start Windows.
/dev/sda2 (Windows 2), NTFS, several GB’s in size, Primary, Original Windows 7 C: drive, You can remove this entry from the Grub Menu as its not the boot drive.
/dev/sda3 (Windows 3), NTFS, What ever GB you stole from Windows 7 to install 8, Primary, New Windows 8 drive D:, You can remove this entry from the Grub menu as its not the boot drive.
Normally, installing openSUSE does not upset the Windows 7 boot partition and neither does it need to remain active, though you might not get a service pack to load. I am not sure how to fix this mess really, but in openSUSE, if it still works, you could give us a fdisk command to see if we can help. Open up terminal and run the following command and post the results here in a message:
su -
password:
fdisk -l
Here is what my Windows disk looks like, but it has only Windows 7 loaded on it:
Disk /dev/sdb: 128.0 GB, 128035676160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15566 cylinders, total 250069680 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000073d7
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 1019903 508928 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2 1019904 248483839 123731968 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
I can say that Windows 8 can be reinstalled and so can openSUSE. You might blow these away and then try to fix your Windows 7 install and then load openSUSE again, without Windows 8 being there. The problem may be just the Windows boot loader in the first small partition, but I am just not sure.
I’ve just installed the newest version of openSUSE
Can you please tell what that version is because:
a) When people read this thread next year (coming here trough a search of e.g. Google), they will not know what the “newest version” was at this moment in time;
b) several people may have different ideas about what “newest” is. Some may think that 12.2 MS3 is the newest at this moment in time, others may think that 12.1 is the newest supported version and other may even make the mistake that a DVD they found recently contains the newest while in fact it doesn’t.
After all it does not take too much effort to type e.g “12.1” enstead of “the newest version”, it certainly takes less keystrokes.