After setting up Opensuse 11.1 and Win 7 dual boot, I had run Grub to restore the boot loader, and ended up doing more harm than good. Instead of wasting time trying to fix it I pulled the drive out, wiped it, and am now in the process of setting up Win 7.
This is a laptop drive with a utility partition at the beginning of the drive. Unfortunately the DVD drive does not read recordable media well, so for Windows I copied the DVD install files and booted off the drive directly into install. When I get to Opensuse I will have to use the net install.
First, as anyone done dual boot with Windows 7 and Opensuse 11.1? Will the Grub restore be the same as Vista? Will Opensuse correctly identify I have Windows and create a Grub entry? If asked, where should I have the bootloader put?
I’ve done a dual-boot with Windows 7 and openSUSE 11.1. I bought a new hard drive (the one I’m currently using) for my laptop and I decided to try windows 7 out on it. So I installed it and then I also installed openSUSE 11.1 on it. My computer never gave me problems with dual-booting though, not with vista or xp. I finally moved my vista partition onto this computer so I no longer dual-boot with w7 but it worked on my computer.
As I said, I’ve never had problems with GRUB. It’s always done a spot on job of handling dual-boots so I can’t answer that. As for where to put the bootloader, I would suggest putting it in the MBR.
Will the Grub restore be the same as Vista?
Not sure what a “grub restore” is – but windows 7 bootloader is the same as vista so the short answer to your question is: yes.
Will Opensuse correctly identify I have Windows and create a Grub entry?
Yes
If asked, where should I have the bootloader put?
Master Boot Record
Hi
This may be a bit late, but will post about my netbook rebuild today…
I’ve just rebuilt my netbook in a multiboot configuration with the
existing win XP home (sda1 20GB). I then booted to openSuSE rescue and
setup a second 20GB partition (sda2) with fdisk and set the boot flag
to sda2 rather than sda1, wrote the changes and rebooted from the
windows 7 install dvd.
Then installed windows 7 and rebooted fine into the new install,
configured antivurus, installed firefox etc. Rebooted the openSuSE
rescue dvd and swapped the boot flag back to sda1 and it now booted into
windows XP without issues.
Then rebooted and ran the openSuSE 11.1 install and configured the rest
of the 250GB drive as sda3 extended at 74GB within this extended
partition I have 4GB swap (sda5), 30GB openSuSE Gnome (sda6), 30GB
openSuSE KDE4 (sda7), 10GB ubuntu remix (sda8) and finally a data
partition of the balance (sda4). I installed the Gnome desktop first,
then ubuntu remix (let it install it’s bootloader in sda8) and finally
the kde4 install.
I prefer to create symlinks to common applications in my /data
partition eg firefox, crossover, ~/bin/ scripts etc then can leave
gnome/kde4 to do their own thing in ~/
sda3 (extended partition) is where the bootloader is installed and the
KDE4 install picked up the other 4 OSes and added entries to grub as
required for booting.
@swendra, any comment on the bootloader being on sda3??
Truth is you can put it on many partitions. I urge MBR because it makes it simpler when there are problems. It’s hard for new users to understand boot records on high-number partitions, let alone manipulate them. So I recommend the MBR for new users. But for experienced users like you, the advice is as my grandson says “whatever floats your boat”
