First time linux user here. I just installed openSUSE on my external 250GB HD. I made sure to put grub on the /root partition of my HD and not overwrite windows mbr. Now after I successfully installed openSUSE, it booted into it(my laptop didnt have to completely restart), and it was working perfectly. Now I went and restarted it and my laptop booted into Vista. I downloaded EasyBCD from neosmart and went to add the linux entry, but in the drop down list of disk/partitions, only my internal HD is showing. So basically what I’m asking is how do I add the linux entry to my Vista’s boot configuration, so I can choose which one I want to boot into at startup. Is there a reason why easybcd isnt putting my external in the drop down list? I went to disk manager and its recognizes my external as Disk 3, and it shows the 3 partitions of linux on it as well. My /swab, /root and /home partitions. So if it recognizes it, why isnt it in the drop down list of disks/partitions?
The EasyBCD site migh be a good starting point for help with that. There may be some of our members with experience with that app but it ain’t me. I have certainly heard of it.
You could try SuperGrubDisk.
I was wondering about the USB booting capabilities of your machine and how relevant that is.?
I figured out I needed to download easyBCD 2.0 beta. I did this and added the linux partition to the boot config., and I chose it on start up and it loads to a black screen with the word “GRUB” on it. What should I do?
Do you know if your root partition has the active boot flag on it?
Just on a side note: I’m not entirely sure how well openSUSE will perform on a USB HD or any Linux Distro for that matter. It doesn’t seem the best employment of such a device.
Having said that, I know some have done what you are trying to do. But I notice the wiki guide for the process is currently missing, probably due to major reconstruction work taking place on the wiki side ATM.
This might be useful, although it doesn’t use easybcd:
Boot Multiboot openSUSE Windows (2000, XP, Vista - any mix) with Windows bootloader.
Vista and win7 have the same bootloader, so even though I haven’t tried in in win7, it will work same as in vista.