I’ve been running opensuse on my old Pentium 4 for a while, but need to revert to a windows config, unfortunately.
Current partition setup:
Disk 1 (IDE Master):
\dev\hda1 Windows XP (NTFS format, bootable)
Disk 2 (IDE Slave):
\dev\hdb1 /boot (active boot - grub installed here)
\dev\hdb2-6 /, /home, etc. etc. linux installation
\dev\hdb7 /xfer (FAT partition)
What I’d like to do is boot from the \dev\hda1 partition. My guess is that I should just run FIXMBR from the windows recovery console on /device/harddisk0, but am concerned about losing the partition table on that drive.
FIXMBR should fix it. It might even be, if /dev/hda is not the first disk in the BIOS, that the original MBR is still intact. But only if /dev/hdb has been the first in the BIOS during openSUSE install.
Thanks for the reply. Only thing I can add is that if I disconnect the second IDE drive (/dev/hdb), the machine doesn’t boot. This suggests that there’s no valid MBR on /dev/hda, IIRC.
It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t boot at this point. pop the XP cd in and boot from that.
Just proceed to the screen where you have the option to Repair Your Computer. Press “R” for Repair and log onto the Windows installation. When the command prompt appears, enter the command fixmbr. Confirm “yes” and you will receive confirmation of the reinstallation of Windows bootstrap code into the MBR. Enter exit and the computer will reboot.
Okay, after backing everything up, I used fixmbr from the restore console (booted off Windows XP install CD), rebooted, and the machine booted into Windows XP without a problem