Got a nasty surprise when I upgraded the Windows half of my dual-boot notebook to Windows 8 – no more dual boot. Now I’m reading about UEFI and GPT that I never knew about before. But I haven’t found any solutions that seem to apply to my situation. Is it possible to do? I only have one drive, so both OS reside on different partitions of the same drive. Maybe this is just the excuse I need to buy a PengPod? Thanks for any pointers!
This is normal with windows as it doesn’t play fair with other os’s. To sort out your booting issue the following may be of help:
As this was a windows upgrade I would suspect that UEFI will not be an issue for you. Should you run into issues, information on UEFI will be available elsewhere on this forum… it is not my area of expertise.
Just because you installed Windows 8 does not mean that your hard drive has been converted to GPT. If you did not remove your openSUSE partitions, they may still be there and you may only need to reinstall Grub2. If you boot from an openSUSE LiveCD, you could run the Partitioner (or any Linux disk utility distro such as Parted Magic) and check to see what partitions you still have. More info on partitions can be found here: Creating Partitions During Install for MBR and GPT Hard Disks - Blogs - openSUSE Forums
Thank You,
openSUSE 12.1 is reaching EOL so you might try and upgrade
openSUSE 12.1 - May 15th 2013 which is in 23 days (2 months after release of 12.3)
source:- Lifetime - openSUSE Wiki
Thank you, perhaps it’s not UEFI. So following your suggestion I followed instructions from https://forums.opensuse.org/content/128-re-install-grub2-dvd-rescue.html but when I got to the last step:
grub2-install /dev/sda
I got “grub2-install: command not found”
I may not have much choice … when grub2-install wasn’t found, I tried grub-install, and that got a nasty message about being unsupported, try yast instead. I’ve lost track of what I actually tried, but now I can’t even launch the rescue system from the DVD, it dies with a blank screen (tried several times). I’ll try upgrading to 12.3. If that doesn’t work, I don’t really have much to lose on the laptop anyway.
One more similar article https://forums.opensuse.org/content/146-using-livecd-take-over-repair-installed-system.html
UEFI is such fun.
Start by making sure that this is a UEFI problem. You say that you upgraded Windows. Most installations of Windows prior to Win8 did not use UEFI and did not use GPT partitioned disks.
If it is UEFI, then you should be able to boot the 64bit rescue CD (or a 64-bit live image) to UEFI mode. It might be then possible to get your system back with “efibootmgr”, but you have to be booted in UEFI mode for that to work.
I’ll comment more when I hear more about your system.
On 2013-04-23 03:56, m bliss wrote:
> grub2-install /dev/sda
>
> I got “grub2-install: command not found”
Maybe you have grub 1 installed.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
I should probably start a new thread, but I did the upgrade to 12.3. Unfortunately, the new system won’t boot, both the regular launch or failsafe dies at “Reached Graphical Interface.” Logs indicate X server failed to launch. I can get to Yast in a terminal as root, and this is what the Hardware inspection indicates under Dispaly on this HP Pavilion 2700: 965 GM and Intel Mobile GM 965 / GL 960. I assume this is a video driver issue, but I’m at a loss how to deal with it. I didn’t see any issues on the SuSE hardware compatibility list.
I should add that the first error message in the Xserver log file is “KMS setup failed”
On 2013-04-23 17:26, m bliss wrote:
>
> m_bliss;2550158 Wrote:
>> I’ll try upgrading to 12.3. If that doesn’t work, I don’t really have
>> much to lose on the laptop anyway.
>
> I should probably start a new thread, but I did the upgrade to 12.3.
> Unfortunately, the new system won’t boot, both the regular launch or
> failsafe dies at “Reached Graphical Interface.”
So, it booted 
How did you upgrade? These are the documented methods:
Online upgrade
method
Offline upgrade
method
Chapter 16. Upgrading the System and System Changes
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
Heehee, you got me there! Yes it boots, but no GUI, only a terminal from <Alt><F1>
How did you upgrade? These are the documented methods:
I did the latter from a DVD. I also tried booting with “nomodeset,” but that failed completely: then it would only respond to the three finger salute!
On 2013-04-23 21:56, m bliss wrote:
> I did the latter from a DVD. I also tried booting with “nomodeset,” but
> that failed completely: then it would only respond to the three finger
> salute!
Well, as explained there, the DVD upgrade can only upgrade what is
contained in the DVD. The rest of the packages are either removed or
left at the old version.
So you have to dig out those old packages, if they exit, and upgrade
them. A method is to run this:
rpm -q -a --queryformat "%{INSTALLTIME} %{INSTALLTIME:day} \
%{BUILDTIME:day} %-30{NAME} %15{VERSION}-%-7{RELEASE} %{arch} \
%25{VENDOR}%25{PACKAGER} == %{DISTRIBUTION} %{DISTTAG}
" \
| sort | cut --fields="2-" | tee rpmlist | less -S
One of the columns is for the distribution, so it is easy to find them.
The other issue is wrong config files. You find them by running
“rcrpmconfigcheck”.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
Any luck with the boot code “x11failsafe” ?
I assume you tried “failsafe” boot and it failed also (possibly due to “nomodeset” being a boot code under “failsafe”).
I vaguely recall reading some Intel graphic hardware have a problem with the “vga=0x314” (or vga=YxYYY" what ever value your boot has). Try also removing that and booting.
I exhausted most of those variations and with robin’s suggestions looked at installed packages. There were a couple of older (2011) xorg packages, but with no network and frustration getting the better of me, I offloaded the home directory, wiped the linux partition and did a fresh install. All is well (after the second-boot-no-network issue). Many thanks for the help, a pretty amazing community this! Take care, all.
On 2013-04-28 02:36, m bliss wrote:
> I exhausted most of those variations and with robin’s suggestions
> looked at installed packages. There were a couple of older (2011) xorg
> packages, but with no network and frustration getting the better of me,
> I offloaded the home directory, wiped the linux partition and did a
> fresh install.
It is unfortunate, no network means no updates to correct problems… 
> All is well (after the second-boot-no-network issue).
> Many thanks for the help, a pretty amazing community this! Take care,
> all.
Welcome.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)