I accidentally deactivated the Windows partition (in my defense, it was because the ONLY way to get SP2 installed, was to “activate” my Windows partition and deactivate my Linux partition). Ridiculous!
Anyway - now I have no “boot loader choice” menu. I cannot access either OS. Nothing - computer just boots in to “please insert operating system media boot disk” etc.
Completely stuck.
I do have a Windows Vista DVD. My question:
How do i go about sorting this mess out? I need to recover my Windows OS - how can i safely do this and not lose data, either from my Linux or Windows partition.
I did try SUPER GRUB DISK to try and recover / activate GRUB:
Run the Repair option from the media you installed from,
or enter the installer and wait for the option “Boot installed system”; it will boot your openSUSE. Once done that, start Yast, System, Bootloader Configuration and create a new bootloader config. That should do.
Yeah - Grub wasn’t able to find anything. I did manage to get my Windows partition booting though. I got a DOS command line up and running (through the Vista recovery/installation CD), and then ran “DISKPART”, and went through the few commands to list volumes / drives etc, selected the one with my Windows partition, and then ran the “ACTIVE” command > rebooted, and all was well.
… apart from the fact that i still don’t have Grub, and i still dont have option to booot in to Opensuse. But hey, at least i have an OS for the time being (even if it is Vista).
Guess next tast is to finish of SP upgrades, then get Grub working as my Boot loader again.
If just changing the “active flag” on the Windows partition restored the Vista boot manager, that means that grub was not install in the MBR - either the Vista MBR boot code is there or when you installed SuSE previously you took the option to install “generic code” (which is nearly identical) to the MBR. In either case, that code is looking for the boot sector in the active primary partition and transferring control to it. Several options to consider:
Boot your SuSE DVD, go in to Repair/Expert Tools/Boot Loader and re-install grub to the SuSE root (or /boot, if separate) partition and change the active flag to that primary partition. The MBR code will now call grub in that partition. If SuSE is not on a primary but rather on a logical partition inside an extended, then install grub to the extended’s boot sector and mark that extended primary partition active.
Or use the SuSE DVD to install grub to the MBR. Then you would need a “chainloading” stanza in the grub menu.lst file to call the Vista boot loader. In this method the active flag is not relevant.
Or use the SuSE DVD to re-install grub to the root partition (per above) but do not change the active flag. In Vista, use bcdedit (or a 3rd-party tool like EasyBCD) to add an entry to Vista’s boot database for SuSE. This is also “chainloading”, but in this case it is Vista that calls grub.