Never get a boot menu

Total newbie here. Just installed 11.0 on my machine…everything went smooth, except now whenever i restart the machine, it boots directly to Windows XP. No menu comes up giving me an option to boot into linux.

After reading other posts, i tried booting from the dvd and trying to rewrite the grub bootloader on the MBR. Every time i try and reboot, goes straight into windows.

Anybody able to help? I had the install program set up the recommended partitions on 40GB of unpartitioned space on my main hd (which has 2 other windows partitions).

What should i do?

If you tried the DVD Repair option for the boot loader and that did not work, then reboot from the DVD into the Rescue System. At the prompt, login at root. Then do:


fdisk -l -u

and post past the output here. You can cleanly reboot the machine with

shutdown -r now

Disk /dev/sda: 300.0 GB, 300069052416 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 cylinders, total 586072368 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x06610661

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 245762369 122881153+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 245762370 586051199 170144415 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda5 245762433 491524739 122881153+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 491524803 495733769 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 495733833 532169189 18217678+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 532169253 586051199 26940973+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders, total 490234752 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe54c9f4b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 63 490223474 245111706 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 41345 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00054101

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 63 625136399 312568168+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdh: 160.0 GB, 160041886208 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581809 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x99fe1064

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdh1 * 63 208925324 104462631 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdh2 208925325 312576704 51825690 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sdh5 208925388 312576704 51825658+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Boot from the DVD, and the select Boot from Hard Disk. If you boot into openSUSE, report back. If not . . .

Boot from the DVD into Rescue. At the prompt, login as root, and do this exactly:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda7 /mnt

and then post back here the output of the following:

cat /mnt/etc/grub.conf
cat /mnt/boot/grub/device.map
cat /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst

I booted into Suse after selecting Boot from Hard Disk

OK. So before working on the fix, since the boot loader installation did not work before as expected we should try to determine why. So boot from the DVD, select Boot from Hard Disk, get into openSUSE, open a terminal window, switch to root (the “su” command), and post back here the output of the following commands

cat /etc/grub.conf
cat /boot/grub/device.map
cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

Then we’ll post back the instructions for the repair.

cat /etc/grub.conf

setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0) (hd1,6)
quit

cat /boot/grub/device.map

(hd3) /dev/sdd
(hd1) /dev/sda
(hd0) /dev/sdc
(hd2) /dev/sdb

cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sun Oct 12 10:02:05 PDT 2008

default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,6)/boot/message

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX
root (hd1,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST3300622AS_9NF06B7H-part7 resume=/dev/sda6 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe – SUSE LINUX
root (hd1,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_ST3300622AS_9NF06B7H-part7 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume edd=off x11failsafe
initrd /boot/initrd

OK, grub was installed to the MBR of sdc, not sda. Also, there is not a stanza in grub’s menu.lst control file for booting Windows.

Very first, go into your bios setup and make sure that the Windows drive is actually the first drive in the boot sequence.

Let’s try to use the YaST Boot Loader gui to fix this. But first we have to correct grub’s device.map. Press Alt-F2 to bring up a Run Dialog box. Type this:

kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/device.map

or if you are using Gnome, then


gnomesu gedit /boot/grub/device.map

Change it to have this one line only, and exactly:


(hd0) /dev/sda

Now run YaST Boot Loader (be sure no other YaST modules are running). Click on the Boot Loader Installation tab, and on that screen, check the Boot from Master Boot Record box, and clear any other boxes checked. Then in the lower-right corner click on Other, and on the context menu, click on Propose New Configuration. It will take a minute and the screen will refresh, again click on Other and click on Edit Configuration Files. The screen will change and you will see a pull-down at top, with device.map showing, and below will be the file contents that you edited. If it has additional lines now, that’s OK - as long as “(hd0) /dev/sda” is still there (and there are no other lines using sda or hd0).

Now in the pull-down select menu.lst. The line with gfxmenu above and with root in the boot stanzas, all should show (hd0,6). There should also be a new stanza for booting windows; it should look very close to this:

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,6)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

Finally, at the pull-down select grub.conf. It should have:

setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0) (hd0,6)
quit

Click Finish and grub will be installed to the MBR. When you reboot, the grub menu should display, with a selection for booting into Windows.

how do i run YaST boot loader?

Never mind…got it. Figured it out.

Thank you so much.