I was a window vista user. I wanted to install suse into my laptop so i shirk a free partition (around 70-80GB free partition) to install suse.
After I had installed suse, I found out that I fail to boot my window vista operation system. It had gave me several choices…
1 : suse…
2 : suse…
3 : window 1…
4 : window 2…
5 : window 3…
However it doesnt have window vista. I tried to edit the window 1 into vista however it did not let me to choose it.
After that i insert back my window vista installer and choose “repair”. Now i can boot my window vista however it doesnt allow me to choose to boot into my suse OS…
My friends said that maybe my boot file was corrupted however they don’t know how to resolve it. Can anyone help me?
A few questions.
What version of openSUSE ?
Is it a DVD or live CD install?
Have you had openSUSE running after this install?
The two openSUSE selections were a normal openSUSE startup and a failsafe startup. The three Windows Entries indicate that you must have three Windows partitions. openSUSE will create an entry for each, but really only needs the first entry. So, I don’t know how many partitions you really have. One very important thing to note is that some Dell Laptops have a restore partition at the very start of the hard drive. IN such a case, you would not ever use the first Windows entry in your Grub Operating System Selection Menu as it could blow up everything. If this is a Dell, you need to determine if it indeed has a very small restoration partition as the first one.
Next issue is the total number of partitions on your hard drive. There can only be four Primary Partitions. Now one of them can be a Logical Partition, which can contain multiple Logical drives, but direct booting will be limited.
So, what might I suggest? I have possible setups, based on where you have a restore partition or not.
Setup 1 (no restore)
- Install Generic MBR (Master Boot Record)
- Partition /sda1 Primary Windows Vista
- Partition /sda2 Primary SWAP
- Partition /sda3 Primary /root with openSUSE ACTIVE booting Partition
OR
Setup 1 (with restore)
- Install Generic MBR (Master Boot Record)
- Partition /sda1 Primary Restore Partition
- Partition /sda2 Primary Windows Vista
- Partition /sda3 Primary SWAP
- Partition /sda4 Primary /root with openSUSE ACTIVE booting Partition
Either setup will require you reduce the number of Windows partitions by one. If you have a restore partition, I would not remove it and further, you must not use the Grub menu entry number one.
All of this boils down to knowing more about your partitions on your hard drive.
Thank You,
My suse is 11.2 …
My laptop is compaq… Last time I only having 3 partition for windows vista. After that I used the “Computer management” → “Disk Management” in the window vista to seperate another partition. So total have four partition. When I install Suse, it helped me to seperate the fouth(free partition) into 3 more partition… If I follow what you had said (Only have 4 partition) means that I have to reduce 6 partition into 4.
So, I do not have any restore partition… is it means that I have to follow the following steps?
Setup 1 (no restore)
- Install Generic MBR (Master Boot Record)
- Partition /sda1 Primary Windows Vista
- Partition /sda2 Primary SWAP
- Partition /sda3 Primary /root with openSUSE ACTIVE booting Partition
Boot openSUSE
Open a terminal and become su -
Become su in Terminal - HowTo - openSUSE Forums
Now copy and paste the following 3 sections of code (using your mouse) (1 at a time)
Post the results
fdisk -l
cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
cat /etc/fstab
T_T the prob is I can boot back to suse… is it any command I can use in window vista terminal?
In short No.
You kind of messed things up. If you hadn’t panicked and fixed the vista boot it would probably have been easier.
I suggest you get the SUSE grub bootloader back. Follow this guide carefully
Re-Install Grub Quickly with Parted Magic - openSUSE Forums
You will need to download and burn Parted Magic first
Downloads
When you have SUSE booting as it was before, post the info I asked for earlier…
You did not tell us weather you used a DVD or live CD, If you have a live CD showing us the output requested is simple.
And we can easily guide you through it.