I just installed OpenSuse (Newest KDE version via Network install) on my laptop where I already have Windows 8.1 installed.
Please advise how I can repair Grub to allow me to dual boot between the 2 operating systems.
After the installation completed, the laptop rebooted and then tried to do PXE network boot and when that failed said some error about no operating system found. I booted into the rescue mode and typed “fdisk -l”
If you installed opensuse to use traditional BIOS booting, that will be a problem. If you installed it as UEFI booting, then it should be fine unless your computer has a broken implementation of UEFI.
Questions: Did you boot the installer in UEFI mode? Did the partitioner want “/boot/efi”?
Hmm, more basic: Is this a 64-bit or 32-bit install (because 32-bit doesn’t do UEFI).
What’s “/dev/sda8”? If it is another EFI partition and formatted as FAT, then it is way bigger than needed.
Okay, after changing BIOS setting back to UEFI I am able to boot again into Windows 8.1.
I went into Microsoft disk management to try to erase the 4 linux partitions and start over but now it allows me to erase only 3 out of the 4 partitions. THe 15.69GB EFI partition (That appears to have been created during the OpenSuse installation cannot be deleted in Microsoft disk management (The option to delete is greyed out).
What can I do from here? Is there a third party tool I can use to erase the partition? I want to have 40GB of unformatted free space to install OpenSuse with the default automatic Linux partition scheme that is used in the OpenSuse installer.
If you want to first delete those partitions to make a fresh start, then boot your install media in rescue mode. Then use “fdisk” to delete the unwanted partitions. Be careful not to delete anything that Windows is using.
Then reboot the install media and do your install.
As you have discovered, legacy booting and UEFI booting don’t mix. It’s best to have all systems booting the same way. In my opinion, UEFI is the way to go.
After completing the installation (fresh, from scratch) for OpenSuse 13.2 64 bit…The system automatically said it is rebooting in countdown 10 seconds and when it did it booted directly into Windows 8.1 as if Grub did not even exist.
Which is an obscure and unpopular laptop so I am really happy that everything just works. And I am shocked that I can read/write to my Windows NTFS data partition with no extra configuration needed…it just works!
Totally loving OpenSuse. I must say Linux has really come a long way in 10 years since I last used it!
Back then I remember trying to set up a laptop and I must have worked over 65 hours to get everything working even having to complile programs and so forth (with bash errors like you wouldnt believe) and so frustrated I almost threw the laptop against the wall in anger.
I can totally see Windows becoming my secondary OS now!
(Please advise how to mark this ticket as Resolved / Closed) Thanks again =)
