I have a Dell insperion-660 desktop with 2 one Tbit drives, one came with the machine, the other I bought for the purpose of installing opensuse 12.3 on. I attempted to have each os boot from there own disk drive, somehow grub found a way to replace the windows mrb.
Is there any way ,short of reinstalling windows 8 to reclaim the boot sector for windows 8?
Hi
Windows 8 is UEFI booting? No MBR…?
Anyway, if it is MBR you need to boot from the windows 8 recovery DVD (or USB if you created one in Win8, yes?) and open the command window and run;
bootrec.exe /FixMbr
I tried that and the statement come back that boot record was repaired. When I tried to boot no luck, it just went to the black screen informing me to use my recovery, repair disk. I hope this doesn’t mean I have to do a complete install !?
I am not sure what you did there.
Your Dell almost certainly came with UEFI, which does not depend on the MBR.
If you switched the BIOS to use legacy MBR booting, then you will not be able to boot Window 8. You will have to switch back to UEFI for that.
What’s the output from:
# parted -l
The results of running parted -l , Indicated that my boot record for my windows drive was dev/sda2. I am able to boot suse from C: also.
it looks like that overwrote some of that boot record . The problem happend while trying to cofigure easyBCD to handle my multiple os’s’ It would load windows but not linux.so I tried to undue it, before I did I backed up my system to a previous date. Now I am looked out of my c: drive by BDC.
The idea was for you to post the output of “parted -l” using code tags. There might be more we want to use than your one line summary.
As best I can tell, with my experimenting, easyBCD is not useful in a UEFI setup.
If you made an initial backup of your Windows 8 system, as Dell urges you to do, then my best advice would be to do a complete reinstall from that. Then post here asking for help installing opensuse. In my experience, 12.3 can work well with UEFI on an Inspiron 660, but there are a few traps that need to be worked around.
If you did not make an initial backup, you could check with Dell to see if they can provide reinstall media.
Model: ATA WDC WD10EZEX-75Z (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 316MB 315MB ntfs
2 316MB 420MB 105MB fat32 boot
3 555MB 1000GB 1000GB ntfs
Model: ATA ST1000DM003-1CH1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 500GB 500GB primary ntfs type=07
2 500GB 1000GB 500GB extended boot, lba, type=0f
5 500GB 502GB 2156MB logical linux-swap(v1) type=82
6 502GB 524GB 21.5GB logical ext4 type=83
7 524GB 1000GB 476GB logical ext4 type=83
Model: Seagate FreeAgent Pro (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 494GB 494GB primary ext4 boot, type=83
2 494GB 500GB 6308MB extended type=05
5 494GB 500GB 6308MB logical linux-swap(v1) type=82
Model: pny USB 2.0 FD (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 16.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 16.4kB 16.0GB 16.0GB primary fat32 boot, lba, type=0c
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I’m requoting, but with code tags to improve readability.
In order to be able to boot opensuse (or whatever is on “/dev/sdb”, you had to change a BIOS setting to use legacy MBR booting. Windows 8 won’t boot that way. So you have to change the BIOS back to UEFI for booting Windows 8.
Best would have been to use GPT partitioning on “/dev/sdb” and to install opensuse in UEFI booting mode.
You already have an installed system, so not sure the best direction. But check the BIOS settings, and make sure that they are in UEFI mode. See if you can boot Windows that way. If that works, we then have to find a way of getting linux booted.