Hi, can someone help… I’m new to opensuse - really love it and have the kde desktop which I’m enjoying.
I have a dell E6400, which I picked up recently 2nd hand. Previous owners had Win 7 evaluation version on it, which had expired. Originally the machine had Vista Business on it and Lic Key intact.
I installed Opensuse on without problems whilst waiting for the original Vista disc to make it’s way to me - forgot to pick it up with the machine.
I now want to get rid of the expired Win 7 and re-install Vista, but the grub is only giving me the option of Windows, Opensuse, Opensuse Safe and Floppy. My machine only has a cd/dvd drive and when I’ve selected this the dvd has started, but then it looks like it defaults back to Opensuse which goes so far then freezes.
No obvious way for me to reinstall vista. This may of course be a completely daft question to ask, but I’ve looked at this for an hour or so and can’t figure it out…?
Well, it is a problem to come back and install Windows later. Your first step sounds like you need to go into your BIOS setup and make sure your CD-ROM drive is set as the first boot device so you can boot from the CD/DVD. I would then boot from the Windows 7 CD and see if it gives you the choice to load Windows in place of Vista, but it may not. Next, if you can get Vista to do anything, you might try running the Windows 7 install from Vista, which might actually work, but as I remember, an expired Vista does not allow you to do very much.
The last time I tried this, I could not get Windows 7 to do anything until I zapped all Linux partitions from the disk. There is no reason you can’t boot from the Windows disk and see what your options are, but install was not there for me. Issues after you install openSUSE are that the Windows partition is not marked active and the Master Boot Record (MBR) may contain Grub and not generic boot code. These issues besides Linux partitions seem to convince Windows it can not be installed after you install openSUSE.
Now, you may be able to use a program like GParted to hide the Linux partitions and what ever you do with Windows, you will need to reload the grub boot menu after you install Windows 7. So, if you want to know my opinion, you need to blow away openSUSE, keep 80 GB away from Windows and reinstall openSUSE after you get Windows 7 installed. I might also add that I have this laptop for work and I purchased a 500 GB external hard drive, the small one that runs from the USB port and installed openSUSE onto that and it works like a champ for me and I keep the built-in drive all Windows and no grub boot loader present at all. It is something to think about.
What I mean is that when I have tried to re-install and selected ‘floppy’ from the options shown by the grub, I can hear the dvd initiate and spin more quickly as though in the process of reading, prior to it then reverting back to a Opensuse which fails to start and locks up.
As the machine re-boots the grub is pushing me to only be able to select either the existing OS options or floppy and this isn’t enabling me to re-install Windows Vista via the cd/dvd drive.
The Bios was fine prior to install of Opensuse and Grub - and cd/dvds worked ok at the point that the machine re-booted - which is how I installed Opensuse. I think it’s something to do with the Grub and I can’t get back to the Bios settings as the machine re-boots and the grub kicks in and we’re back with the problem again. Am feeling out of my depth a little.
I’ve taken a look at Yast and I’ve seen that I can edit the bootloader settings including ‘Floppy’, but am not at all familiar with this and haven’t gone any further or made any changes.
I’m thinking that in the absence of a cunning plan from someone I’ll probably end up…
Removing Opensuse (having transferred files etc.) and the grub - need to read up on how to do this first;
Re-install Vista to get rid of the expired Win 7 OS
Re-install Opensuse
If anyone has a short-cut to this then this would make me very happy…
You can remove/reinstall openSUSE if you like, but it will just be a waist of time in this case. Grub is nothing but a bootmager installed on a device (your harddisk). What you need to do in order to install (any) Windows is to boot from another device (the Vista installation CD/DVD). Whether Grub is installed in your MBR or not is irrelevant: it will be overwritten and replaced with a generic bootcode by Windows setup, and you will have to reinstall it afterwards in order to be able to choose between Windows or Linux at boot time. But you’ll just have to reinstall Grub (it takes 2 minutes), not openSUSE!
As previously mentionned:
Did you follow this advice?
Do you know how to call the BIOS setup on your machine?
Yes… Bios now updated - Floppy unchecked on it and CD/DVD Drive now first on the list.
I hadn’t been pressing my F2 button quick enough previously… not had to do this before. Problem not resolved though…
When I checked the Grub menu at boot up again nothing had changed, so I sought to amend this through Yast, but this didn’t work. Having checked the hardware my Floppy Drive was showing as dev/fd0 and the CD-Rom Drive as dev/sr1.
dev/sr1 was not on the list of available addresses for the bootloader via Yast… I tried to edit it to sr1 by typing this and saving, but it reverted to sd0 instead.
when I changed it back to dev/fd0 things were same as before and when tried to select Floppy, or CD-Rom Drive as I’d changed it to, it threw up an error message 21 selected disc does not exist - because address dev/fd0 is clearly wrong.
You should not see the Grub menu at all when you boot from Vista CD-Rom. You should see Vista installation setup. If you see the Grub menu, something is wrong:
Your CD-Rom drive is still NOT the first device (before HD) in the BIOS
Your Vista CD-ROM is corrupted
Your CD-Rom drive is dirty, broken or not connected properly (broken cable?)
Your IDE onboard controller is disabled or broken (if you have an IDE CD-Rom drive)
You’re right… it’s a problem with the Vista CD-ROM… I tried another ‘recovery’ disc and it worked straight away without going on to Grub and the bootloader menu.
I will try to get my hands on another Vista disc, or may invest and upgrade to Win 7.
I may need a bit of help once I’ve got this, but really appreciate your advice so far.