OpenSuse 11.3 / WinXP Dual boot help

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hey Guys,

I screwed up with my iniitial install of OpenSuse 11.3 months ago. I’ve now been running and tweaking this system so that it runs great and has everything I need. Though I’m still a bit of a Linux n00b.

Problem is … I’d like to install WinXP to run ITunes (can’t find anything in Suse for good Ipod Management and WINE Itunes doesn’t seem great either) and for gaming (local installs and Steam games … same as above).

linux-guhv:/home/mike # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000c6389

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 262 2103296 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 262 2873 20972544 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2873 60802 465309696 83 Linux
linux-guhv:/home/mike #

Is there any way to shrink that home partition by 100 Gig and install WinXP and then repair the boot loader without losing all the time I’ve spent customizing my build?

Cheers!

Mike

#2

It’s not as simple as it sounds Mike.

You currently have 3 Primary Partitions, you can only create One more Primary.
So yes, you could do it, with Gparted or Parted Magic. But I recommend you back up.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/pmagic-4.5.iso
Do you see the * in the sda2 line, that’s showing the boot flag on that partition. Windows will switch it to sda4 (the partition you want to/ will create.)
Once your win install is done, windows should boot.

To get SUSE booting again, Use gparted or parted magic and move the boot flag off sda4 back to sda2
If you reboot, SUSE may boot, but I doubt it, worth a try though.

If it doesn’t, follow this:
Re-Install Grub Quickly with Parted Magic

After all that we will need to add a windows option to the boot menu

#3

well … thanks for the advice.

So far so good. Downloaded PartMagic and shrunk my home dir with no visible issues so far.

Now for the fun part. Loading XP with my fingers crossed.

Thanks again!

Cheers!

Mike

#4

Mike,

It is scary if you don’t do such things often.

Obviously you know to format the partition to ntfs. Sometimes I find that even though I have done that with Parted M, I still have to do it again with the windows installer, just for everything to work nicely. I don’t think XP is as picky as some installs I have done with Vista and 7.
And obviously you realize that with the windows installer you need to be careful to select the partition you want it to use.
And XP doesn’t use sda1 sda2 etc…
Just Partitioned space and the size

The grub repair should go like this:
Using the Roxterm from Parted Magic

You type: grub
Terminal: grub>

You type: find /boot/grub/menu.lst
Terminal: (hd0,1) (N.B. You may get different, replace your numbers in the next step)

You type: root (hd0,1) (Or different depending what previous step gave for you)
Terminal: Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

You type: setup (hd0)
Terminal: Checking if /boot/grub/stage1 exists … yes Computer finally returns this-- Succeeded…Done

You type: quit
reboot

Then when you reboot you should see openSUSE boot menu again.

To add the entry for windows you need to edit the menu.lst file
Edit the Grub Menu to add Windows entries.

This will be your entry

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader +1
#5

Hey all …

The grub portion didn’t really work for me … had a couple of errors that I didn’t capture and WinXP kept booting over SUSE so I just used Parted to mark the SUSE OS Partition as boot and Grub worked fine. Then I just used YAST to update the grub boot config to include WinXP. All works great!!!

Thanks for the help.

Cheers!

Mike

#6

Good news
Well done!