Installed 11.4 on a machine with two SATA drives which had previously been running Windows 2003. I deleted the Windows partitions and created a new partition scheme: Swap, root and one additional partition on the first disk, one large partition on the second disk. Install runs fine but upon reboot I get “Error loading operating system”.
Booting off a Windows floppy and running FDisk shows that the root partition is marked as active.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
David
It’s all about Grub / HD Boot order
Try using supergrubdisk, see if it will boot your system.
We need to see your partitions and also what boot order the HD’s are in. But first see if you can boot as I ask and then I’ll advise
Thanks. It runs fine booting off supergrubdisk from CD – but only from a USB CD, not from the internal IDE CD drive I used to install OpenSUSE in the first place! I don’t know if that’s just a sign of a flaky old drive or a symptom of the same boot problems.
It appears I should be able to use supergrubdisk to fix the problem but I’m not sure how.
If you can boot to the SUSE system and open a terminal.
Please post the output from
cat /etc/fstab
then the next two need to be su - so do this
su -
cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
and
fdisk -l
Also explain to us your HD boot order and what you think you did with regard to the partition setup
I deleted the previous Windows partitions using a Windows XP install CD, then let the OpenSUSE install create new partitions. I ran the OpenSUSE install a second time after I first encountered the booting problem but did not recreate partitions.
The first disk, 80GB SATA, has a 2GB swap partition, a 20GB root partition which shows as active as should be the boot partition, and the balance of the disk in a third partition. The second disk, 160GB SATA, is a single partition.
I’m selecting “MBR and Linux, Automatic” from the supergrubdisk boot menu and the system is booting as expected from there.
Information you requested below:
mail2:~ # cat /etc/fstab
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST380817AS_5MR5BBEP-part1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST380817AS_5MR5BBEP-part2 / ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST380817AS_5MR5BBEP-part3 /home ext4 defaults 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
mail2:~ # cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message
##YaST - activate
###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop – openSUSE 11.4 - 2.6.37.1-1.2
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST380817AS_5MR5BBEP-part2 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST380817AS_5MR5BBEP-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop
###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe – openSUSE 11.4 - 2.6.37.1-1.2
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST380817AS_5MR5BBEP-part2 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop
###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Floppy
rootnoverify (fd0)
chainloader +1
mail2:~ # fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 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: 0x0a8db085
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 4208639 2103296 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 4208640 46153727 20972544 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 46153728 156301311 55073792 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 164.7 GB, 164696555520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders, total 321672960 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: 0x6e216e21
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 321652735 160825344 83 Linux
Open a terminal and become su -
Type this:
grub
next
find /boot/grub/menu.lst
It should return like this: (hd0,1)
Next enter:
root (hd0,1)
you will see something like this: Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
next enter:
setup (hd0)
Now reboot and please make sure the 80GB HD is first HD in BIOS boot order
That did it! Thank you very much.
I wish I knew what I had done to screw it up. 
David
Happy to help
I have no idea what you did