Windows 7 and Suse 11.3 keep killing each other.

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I suspect it’s just Windows 7’s booting mechanism that’s the root cause of my booting woes, but I just can’t seem to get this right.

I’ve just built a new PC and had a single HDD in it to start with. I installed Windows 7 on it yesterday and everything was fine. Then today, I put another HDD into my PC, changed the HDD order in the BIOS to make the new disk the first one, and then installed Suse 11.3 on the new HDD. Suse installed fine, but when I tried to boot Windows 7 it just had a bit of output from Grub followed by “BOOTMGR IS MISSING”.

I’ve searched the forums and tried lots of things. Tweaking Grub, using some bootrec /rebuildbcd command from a rescue utility on the Windows 7 install disk and so on, but I just can’t seem to get the right combination to fix it.

I noticed that when I initially installed Windows, it created a small partition of just 100MB. So I thought perhaps I should have Grub point to that as the partition to boot Windows 7 from, but that didn’t work either.

I’m too unwell to be spending ages trying to figure this out, so I’m perfectly happy to just take the idiot-proof route here and just nuke everything and do a fresh install of both operating systems.

Can someone tell me which OS to install first and whether or not I should change the boot order of the HDDs between installing each OS? That’s what I normally did when dual booting Suse and XP, but nothing seems to work now.

Installing Suse stopped Windows from booting and trying a reinstall of Windows 7 prevented either from booting (and so I then had to reinstall Suse).

#2

Somehow you Jeffed the MBR of the windows drive. You should make sure you install grub to the SUSE HD.
Here is a bit about grub
SDB:All about GRUB - openSUSE

To fix windows. If you have the windows DVD, unplugg the power on the SUSE HD, boot the windows DVD and do an automatic repair.
Test that windows boots, then re-connect the SUSE HD and switch it to first in the BIOS
Re-install grub to (hd0) like this
Re-Install Grub Quickly with Parted Magic

#3

I had a read of the All about Grub article, but I’m finding it rather difficult to concentrate at the moment. I’m fairly certain I installed Grub on the Linux HDD. I told the installer to boot from the root partition. I’ll check through everything you’ve mentioned just to make sure and then post back soon.

#4

Thing to watch for is.
Even though you set Linux HD as first in BIOS boot order. It’s sometimes the case during the install when you get to the custom partitioner, that the SUSE HD will not be seen as sda (which is what you would expect) but rather sdb.
If you really get stuck. Once you have the windows HD repaired/working on it’s own. Disconnect it. Re-connect the SUSE HD, re-install SUSE and get it running. Then reconnect the win HD and we can manually add an entry to grub for it. All I need is this: Done for a su - terminal

fdisk -l

**cat /etc/fstab

cat /boot/grub/menu.lst**

#5

Disconnecting the Suse HD before tring to repair Windows with the installer disk worked after a few tries. It seemed to fix a couple of problems that it found (one fix per reboot until it started booting normally).

After Windows started booting normally, I plugged the Suse HD back in and I got the same message as before: missing “BOOTMGR”. The problem went away when I switched the boot order of the HDs in BIOS. If I told my PC to boot from the Suse HD, then Grub would offer Windows 7, but then I’d get that error again. When I told my PC to look to the Windows HD first, though, it started fine without a hitch.

What do you think I should try now? You think I should try to re-install Suse with Wondows HD unplugged, or is there something simpler that can fix it now that Windows is bootable from its own HD?

Your help is greatly appreciated, by the way. :smiley:

#6

Put the HD’s in the order they were when you installed SUSE. Boot SUSE and post the info I asked for in the previous post.

I’m crashing to bed now, so you may have to wait until morning. 6hrs from now (that’ll be 3am here)

#7

Ok. Here’s the output when the disks are in the order they were in when I installed Suse.

home:~ # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e8c57

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         262     2103296   82  Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2   *         262        9401    73401344   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            9401       57147   383519744   83  Linux
/dev/sda4           57147       60802    29361152    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf44c24eb

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1          13      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2              13        9138    73296896    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb3            9138       57147   385625088    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb4           57147       60802    29360128    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)


home:~ # cat /etc/fstab
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_6VMDMS3R-part2 /                    ext4       acl,user_xattr        1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_6VMDMS3R-part1 swap                 swap       defaults              0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_6VMDMS3R-part3 /home                ext4       acl,user_xattr        1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_5VMC5AMA-part2 /windows/C           ntfs-3g    users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_GB.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_5VMC5AMA-part3 /windows/D           ntfs-3g    users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_GB.UTF-8 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_5VMC5AMA-part4 /windows/E           vfat       users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
proc                 /proc                proc       defaults              0 0
sysfs                /sys                 sysfs      noauto                0 0
debugfs              /sys/kernel/debug    debugfs    noauto                0 0
usbfs                /proc/bus/usb        usbfs      noauto                0 0
devpts               /dev/pts             devpts     mode=0620,gid=5       0 0


home:~ # cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Fri Aug 20 13:22:41 BST 2010
# THIS FILE WILL BE PARTIALLY OVERWRITTEN by perl-Bootloader
# Configure custom boot parameters for updated kernels in /etc/sysconfig/bootloader

default 0
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Desktop -- openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34-12
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34-12-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_6VMDMS3R-part2 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_6VMDMS3R-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts nomodeset vga=0x314
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34-12-desktop

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows 3###
title Windows 7
    rootnoverify (hd1,1)
    chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34-12
    root (hd0,1)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34-12-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3500418AS_6VMDMS3R-part2 showopts apm=off noresume edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe vga=0x314
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.34-12-desktop

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: hard_disk###
title Hard Disk
    rootnoverify (hd0,0)
    chainloader +1

I guess I’ll go and start installing the drivers etc. on Windows until tomorrow, then. Thanks for the help so far. :smiley:

#8

Change this

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: hard_disk###
title Hard Disk
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

to this

###Don’t change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: hard_disk###
title Hard Disk
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

In a normal terminal Use either (depending if you use gnome or kde

kdesu kwrite /boot/grub/menu.lst

or

gnomesu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

#9

Either the caf4926 way works for you or just start all over.
Install both HDD’s, install W7 on the first drive (later sda) and after that openSuSE 11.3 on the second HDD called sdb.

That should do it, the openSuSE install takes me just 17minutes.

#10

Awesome. Many thanks, caf. The “Hard Drive” entry now boots Windows 7 no problem. :slight_smile:

I’ll just delete the current “Windows 7” entry that fails to boot and rename the “Hard Drive” entry to “Windows 7”.

Thanks for your input too, Marquis. :slight_smile:

#11

You are welcome

#12

I use two x 1tb inside my box. sda is for win 7 sdb is for openSuse (currently 11.3) grub is on sda (default by openSuse installation)
No problems. I did get the sata cables the “wrong way round” during install of tv card. Nightmare. Replaced cables into correct slots
peace and tranquillity