I finally reinstalled OpenSUSE 11.1 on my system and did all the manual partitioning so that it installed on the correct (I have 2 SATA hard disks) drive. It worked out and everything ran smoothly until this morning when I tried to boot OpenSUSE. I have my boot set to the drive with SUSE on it, but when I got to the screen where the boot loader gives the options of which Operating System to boot, I got the message: No Operating System found in white letters on a black background. I went and put the OpenSUSE 11.1 DVD in the drive and tried to see if I could select Boot from hard disk on the options (above Installation), but that didn’t seem to solve the problem. The only reason I know that OpenSUSE is still installed on the 2nd drive is because I went into Windows System Management and I can see the 3 partitions and the extended partition for Linux on the 2nd drive. I formatted each drive as EXT3 during installation, just like the suggested setup. Any ideas on how to be able to boot back into OpenSUSE. I don’t want to do a clean install because of a lack of time to do so, as well as there are important documents and files I have on the system.
Is windows on this machine. If so, how did you boot it?
If you have been using Yast bootloader to change anything, it could have screwed up grub. You might need to re-install grub, making sure it goes in the right place. Many users have had issues with this.
I have Windows on sda1 and then OpenSUSE on sdbX (where x represents the integer for the location of the partition). How I boot is: I boot from the Hard drive with OpenSUSE on it and if I want to go into Windows, I choose the Windows option from the boot loader, and then my other hard drive will boot and I have Windows. I don’t think I changed anything on GRUB, but I did go into the boot loader to see something, but I hit cancel after I was finished, so I assumed that no changes were made if I hit the cancel button. What’s weird is that nothing to my recollection changed between yesterday and today, but today, I can’t boot. I can try to repair the installation when I get the chance and see where that brings me, but based on what others have said in this post, I’m not sure if it will solve the problem.
default settings in the bootloader is funny.i had this problem as well.i used my xp disc to repair mbr then i booted the suse disc.when you reinstall the bootloader there is a tab next to the options ie linux,failsafe.click it and choose to install grub to mbr instead of ext partition.this should fix your problem.it did on my system.
Here is how I fixed my “No Operating System Found” system, many thanks to Swerdna:
I’m documenting this simply to get a trail of what works and what doesn’t for this bug.
Further to this I tried reinstalling the bootloader with the install DVD another way: Boot off DVD –> Rescue System –> enter “root” at login prompt.
Enter this command to switch into grub: grub
I get the grub prompt >
Locate the openSUSE partition with this command: find /boot/grub/menu.lst
That gives (hd0,13)
Enter: root (hd0,13)
Enter: setup (hd0)
Enter: quit
I get the Linux prompt #
Enter: reboot
That gets me to the abbreviated grub menu with only the option to boot to openSUSE 11.1 and via that I get back into openSUSE 11.1.
So now to get a complete bootloader I go to Yast __. Bootloader –> Other –> Propose New Configiuration –> OK.
I reboot to see if the bootloader repair is good.
It is repaired and I can boot into all of my operating systems.
Conclusion: there’s something defo wrong with the bit that changes the default boot item in Yast –> bootloader. It corrupts the master boot record. But the situation is retrievable by standard methods. These methods are certainly not available semi-intuitively via Yast and/or the Installation media.
PS the nice graphical bootloader screens stayed throughout all of the above.
I have a similar problem installing from live CD. During installation I get an error message that writing the boot configuration failed. I can’t copy the entire error message, but it ends with a statement that the drive does not exist.
I tried to reboot anyway with the result you’d expect. Any reason not to try the procedure described above with the live CD?
I applied the same procedure from the live CD. The system was able to boot from the hard drive for the first time and finish installation without a hitch.
