I got an external hardrive planning on installing openSuse 10.3 onto it by selecting the external hdd when i got to the partitioner while installing openSuse. this all went fine and i finished installing it and rebooted my computer. My computer on reboot then came up with the GRub bootloader i think its called? and i had to choose which operating system to boot into. this was all well, i could choose opensuse or windows or the otehr opensuse safe thingy. (note: windows is still instaleld on my inetrnal HDD) all my stuff was still in my windows account and i was happy. but then i unplugged my external HDD, and now i cant get into windows which i thought i should be able to. its saying tht it cant get into the Grub loader or something. all my data is still on my internal hdd, but i cant access it without my external hdd.
Thanks in advanced to anybody who can help me. It would be much appreciated
Well if you’ve got Suse on sda2 and windows on sda1 and you’ve put the grub code in the Master Boot Record of sda1 – then when it goes to boot the Grub code directs to read from Grub menu’s in the Suse install – but they’re not attached – so it hangs.
Two options:
option 1:
restore the windows code into the mbr of sda1 and add Suse to the bootloader of windows – that way it won’t matter is Suse is attached or not
option2 quite tricky now:
restore windows code to the MBR of sda1 – Suse won’t boot but windows will. To get openSUSE booting change the boot drive in the bios so it boots from sda2. While switched in bios to focus on sda2, boot off the install dvd – select to repair installed Suse and when it comes back it should have Grub code in the MBR of drive 2 sda2. Then you switch the boot drive back to sda1 in bios and use the F8 menu selector to choose which drive to boot from in the future.
Option 3:
is option 2 but don’t repair – fresh install of Suse instead
I’d recommend 1 or 3 (if the Suse is newly installed & not much work is lost)