I had a problem with my pc (Suse 11.0 64bit and XP 32bit) after I switched 3d on every thing went black and so could not see anything on the menu after restarting. Reinstalled Suse made sure Nvidia was installed but I could not boot windows so tried to reinstall windows. Windows setup started as usual. When it asked where to install windows I deleted all the partitions on the C drive, recreated the partition to load it onto. When I told it that this is where to install windows, setup tells me that there is no where suitable to put the mbr or some thing like that but it could use some of a particular hard drive which happened to have linux on (I have 3 hard drives 1 is fully linux and 1 has 35GB free and my empty disk ready for to have windows loaded onto it). What The! Is Microsoft so worried by Linux that it will not load onto your PC without removing Linux. I got the same response from both XP and Vista they would not load. I have had to remove Linux so I can put Billy boy’s bloat ware on, not best pleased I had spent a day getting Suse on, updates plus other installs. Has any one else had this problem at all?
It’s normal. when installing an O.S. like windows,it has to be loaded first, otherwise it complains as you found out.
Andy
The boot information for the Win bootloader must go in the first partition (that is the MBR) of the primary boot HD (that is, as determined in the BIOS). You could boot Windows in any HD in a rack if the data were placed in the MBR of the “booting” HD pointing to the active windows partition containing the operating system.
It is not a MS plot, it is simply the way things are. You can put the windows installation on any partition or HD you like, but the windows boot information pointing to the loader must be installed in the MBR of the ‘booting’ HD (formerly referred to as primary HD).
It is not necessary to load Windows first.
You are not asking how to install Linux or SUSE. You are asking how to install Windows.
Here are 16 million Googles for that subject -http://http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=install+XP+or+Vista+after+installing+Linux&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2
Your first installation of 11 likely was handled by the partioner and worked. The thing to have been done “when it went black” was to boot into 11 safe and reconfigure Sax2 as root from console. When windows asked “where”, you, not Microsoft, decided to wipe the C drive. You have 3 HDs and need instruct Windows to load in a specific partition, just as with Linux. And, since you have 3 HDs, you must also tell it where the MBR of consequence is. Had you directed the repair of the MBR on the correct HD, installed windows in all its glory, you then would/could reconfigure GRUB or NTLDR to boot Linux installations.
If you have EIDE drives, you will have to take that into consideration, planning accordingly.
Here is an article from MS support. You can search for others.
How to partition and format a hard disk in Windows XP
Apple is restrictive with their OS, not Microsoft. The Mac OS must be used in Mac hardware, by license. Windows is “restrictive” in that it requires that the MBR of the booting HD point to the windows bootloader.
If you think Microsoft and “windows” is out to get you, why do you want to reinstall both XP & Vista? How does a broken Linux install (Linux Rocks!) somehow find its origin in a Windows plot?