I intend to install openSUSE 11.3 on a brand new HP Compaq Windows 7 box.
Specs: HP Compaq, 2x AMD Athlon II X2 215 processor 64bit
4GB RAM, 750GB harddisk
Windows 7 Home Premium
On ‘Installation Settings’ I get the following message:
“The bootloader is installed on a partition that does not lie entirely below 128 GB. The system might not boot.”
I of course didn’t continue. I kindly request the opinion (or better advise) of you experts what that message means and what to do before I continue.
Chances are you’ll be fine - But I can’t say go ahead.
You obviously left lots of space before the creation of the SUSE partitions. As those partitions presumably don’t exist yet? Or do they? The could!
Can you give us a idea of what you had in the proposal, even a photograph of it will do:
Thank you for your swift reply. I like your picture/logo!
As far as I can see nothing has been partitioned yet. I aborted the installation.
I can start again to get to the ‘Installation Settings’ page back. Which information inparticular are you after?
Proposed partitioning (roughly) as follows: Total 750GB, 250GB for Windows, rest for openSUSE.
Oh, I forgot: I would like to go for KDE.
Well if it were me… I would just try it
I’m pretty sure it will work anyway but I know what to do if it doesn’t
When you install, the boot flag will switch to the extended partition, which will contain your linux partitions.
If it fails to boot Linux, try booting windows from the grub menu, that should work, but if it doesn’t you need a live cd like parted magic to switch the boot flag to the windows boot partition (that may not be the C drive as win7 can have a boot partition)
Or another alt: Download EasyBCD 2.0.2 - NeoSmart Technologies
And boot everything from windows
Thanks for your comment as well, HRGargi. I’ve done the 5 DVD Win7 system backup and an Acronis mirror on an ext harddisk. I haven’t checked them (as I don’t really know how to do that) but I got on both occasions as ‘successful’ message.
After installation completed I restarted and the GRUB menu came up with:
SUSE
Failsafe
Windows 1
Windows 2
Windows 3
I started Windows 1 and a message came up that the file system had to be checked. Check went OK and PC booted into Windows
I started Windows 2 and the following message came up:
rootnotify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
I did that, GRUB came up and I chose
Windows 3 which ended up into the Recovery Manager of Windows.
I rebooted and since then the GRUB menu doesn’t come up and the box boots directly into Windows without any choice.
If you installed Grub in the extended partition, you’ll probably just have to set the bootflag back on this partition. While reparing itself, Windows propably reactivated its partition. If you installed Grub in MBR, you’ll have to reinstall it, as Windows rewrote generic bootcode there.
