Hey everyone. I installed open suse today after a lengthy struggle. I began the install in Vista and then rebooted to complete the install, well I was not carefull enough and the install dvd was broken. So I managed to get another copy from another PC and installed successfully. However, when I try to boot into Vista, it searches for the install disk and tries to continue the installation process.
Any Help would be greatly appreciated.
Generally it is better to install Windows first then Linux.
Things usually work out better this way.
IIRC the installation method you describe (there are ~dozen diff ways to install) puts a boot sector in the Windows system volume root directory (usually c), creates a backup copy of boot.ini and a temporary new boot.ini file which points to the aforementioned boot sector. Boot.ini is the control file for W2K/XP’s boot loader (ntldr), but Vista also looks for it (for backward compatibility) and if it finds it, will load from it as well as its own boot control (which is under C\boot). After openSUSE installation and reboot, the first program you ran uninstalls itself and restores boot.ini to whatever it was previously.
I’m not sure, but that first program may be under the Vista Control Panel’s “Add & Remove Programs”. When you ask for it to be removed the uninstall will change things back as described above. If not, it’s trivial to do it manually. Actually, unless you have W2K/XP on that machine too, the boot.ini file can just be deleted and that will resolve the problem.
How is the system booting now? Straight into the Vista boot loader? Into the openSUSE boot loader, with a menu selection for Vista? Or? Please describe exactly. The fix can be done thru one of three paths: Booting into Vista and doing it there, booting into Vista’s Recovery Environment which you may have on CD/DVD or on a hard disk recovery partition, or it can be done from within openSUSE.
Thank you for the reply. The boot.ini file is something I though might be causing me trouble. I continued to work with the machine last night and the problem has changed slightly.
When I power on the computer, it goes directly to the openSuse bootloader. I have options to boot windows and opensuse. Opensuse boots just fine. If I select windows, it takes me to the windows bootloader where I have two options (1) install linux (2)windows vista. If I select windows vista I recieve the following output:
Booting GRLDR
Turning on gate A20…Success
Starting cmain()…
and then it hangs, nothing happens for atleast 3 minutes which is about as long as I was able to watch nothing happen.
Thank you again,
I’m fairly sure that what you are seeing is from what is in boot.ini, as I described before. Even though you chose Vista, that installation boot sector is getting in the way (it was set up this way to ensure you would reboot into the installation).
Above I described three methods for fixing this. You need to remove boot.ini. Which method? (If the 3rd, from within openSUSE, you need to determine if/where the Vista partition is getting mounted - do you need help with that, too?)
Thanks,
I was able to finI boot.ini but I think I messed something else up in the mean time. I have everything backed up and am just going to format and reinstall both operating systems. Hopefully, my newly acquired knowledge will make this attempt a bit smoother. I appreciate the help.
Craig
I do have one other question that is not quite within the purview of this subforum. How do I adjust the screen resolution and multiple monitor setup?
I strongly recommend that you not do the installation from within Vista. I’ve fooled with that method and while it works fine from within XP, there are potential Vista gotchas. What is by far the best is the DVD, if not that, from the Live-CD.
For the graphics card/monitor configuration, early in the installation there is an option for “Automatic Configuration” - un-check the box. As a result, after all the software has been installed, there is a step for configuring sound, graphics, printer, etc. The video is the first one in the list; it’s obvious. You can click on the link for the device and IIRC that will take you into the applicable YaST setup module. Of you can accept the defaults shown, and after the installation is complete, go into YaST under Hardware and the setup module is there. Important note: If you have an ATI or nvidia graphics device, openSUSE will configure an open source alternative driver (sort of how Windows initially sets up the vesa driver, until you install and/or configure the driver that came with the card). The open source drivers may not have all the features you want. You can install the ATI or nvidia provided proprietary drivers from an openSUSE repository they maintain for that purpose; there are howto’s and even a 1-click install.
I am having a similar issue. When I select my vista partition I get:
Booting GRLDR
Turning on gate A20… Success
Starting CMAIN ()…
Then nothing. I have gone into the windows partition and ensured that the boot.ini is not in the boot folder of the drive. There is a file called Boot.ini.saved in the c folder.
I have also verified the /boot/grub/menu.lst
here is what I have:
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
I have attemted to change this to (hd0,0) but this just results in grub not selecting the drive at all.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Figured it out. Had to delete the grldr and grldr.mbr from the vista partition. Then through YaST I reinstalled the grub loader to the MBR partition and it booted into windows.
@mwzotti -
Vista is booting now because its boot manager, failing to find grldr, is then going to the next choice in its boot database which is the normal Vista boot. Sometime you are probably going to want to remove the grldr entry from the bcd registry. You can do that with Vista bootrec program from the Vista Recovery Environment, or with a tool like EasyBCD. The bootrec instructions are here How to use the Bootrec.exe tool and here Windows Boot Configuration Data file. If you don’t have a Vista RE - it is highly advisable to have it - you can get one from the same website as EasyBCD.
I deleted the grldr and grldr.mbr from the vista partition and then from SUSE reloaded Grub. Then the 2 entries showed up again in the vista partition.
I use Grub as my bootloader and OpenSUSE as the default operating system. Since the removal of those 2 files I have had no issues booting into either OS. Does this mean that my bootloader is still messed up? Do I still need EasyBCD to modify the vista bootloader even though I am not using it to boot into Linux?
No, you don’t need to do anything as long as everything is working. All I was referring to is that inside the Vista bcd registry (the database of boot entries, the replacement for boot.ini) there is still an entry for booting grldr. If you were to boot Vista directly from the MBR (right now you are “chainloading” it from grub), you would see a menu with a selection for the openSUSE installer (grldr) that would be invalid. If you ever want to clear that out of the bcd, the RE or EasyBCD can do that for you. That’s all.
That is some very useful information if I ever decide to delete OpenSUSE and go back to just Windows.
Thankfully I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
I appreciate your help. These forums are a very useful tool and are way more effective that just doing a google search.
-Will
We’re glad to be of some help. 