This is a guide, which I have written at 2am (most prob not a good idea, but oh well!) for those installing openSUSE with Windows on the same computer, one physical hard-disk, and 2 different partitions…
NOTE: IF YOU WANT TO USE WINDOWS NTLDR AS YOUR DEFAULT BOOT LOADER, FOLLOW THIS, OTHERWISE DONT TROUBLE YOURSELF…
having said that, you should partition your hard-disk manually, if you haven’t done so. You should only apperciate the auto-partitioninig system if you are only planning to use opensuse as the only OS
[this may seem quite complex, but very simple once you get it]
<–START–>
- Windows is installed on sda1 (or C drive)
- Grab a copy of PartedMagic (its around 40mb, and is an ISO, and then burn it to a CD)
- Install openSuse on sda2(ext3) and sda3(swap), with the following grub installation parameters:
-Tell grub to install itself to the ROOT partition, not extended, and certainly not MBR or BOOT…
-you can do this, just in the confirmation page of the suse installation
- Once installation done, then reboot… You should be able to go to Windows but not Suse, but that is no problem…
- In windows, click on Run -> type: ‘c:\boot.ini’ -> You should see something like this:
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=“Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /bootlog
add the following like to the end of the file:
C:\grub.mbr=“openSuse 11.1”
5)Save and then put the PartedMagic in and then restart and boot from the Cd…
6)Load the program with all the default selections (wouldn’t really need to change anything)
7)From the utilities on the bottom, select mount helper (or something like that), then mount the XP drive on…
8)Open the cosole, and type the following down:
dd if=/dev/sda2 of=grub.mbr bs=512 count=1
the press enter, the type the following
cp grub.mbr /sda1/grub.mbr
9)restart the computer, boot to Windows (just to make sure that your windows is not screwed) then reboot and boot to suse…
10)AND YOU ARE DONE!!!
<–END–>