GRUB - Error 5 - Dual Boot WinXP MC/SuSe 10.1

[SMix]

Ok first off I am very sorry if anyone has answered this question. I have seen many dual boot issues on here but I don't believe any of them are the problem I am having. Also, another important note, I am very new to Linux so try and give me the simplest explanations possible. LoL. Basically I have an XP Media Center box. It has 4 drives: 2 IDE, 1 SATA, 1 External IDE. In their current arrangement:

hda - IDE 1 250GB
hda1 - Part 1/2 Striped Partition NTFS
hdb - IDE 2 250GB
hdb1 - Part 2/2 Striped Partition NTFS
sda - SATA 1 - 250GB
sda1 - Windows C: NTFS Partition - 60GB
sda2 - HP_RECOVERY D: FAT32 - 9GB
sda3 - Extended - 22GB
sda4 - SWAP - 2GB
sda5 - / Resierfs - 20GB
sda6 - /home Reiserfs - 159GB
sdf - External IDE 160GB

I believe this is the setup. Currently I can't check because I can't get into Linux at all now. Basically when I start, the computer will attempt to load GRUB which was installed on hda i believe. It starts and loads with an error 5. Before I booted into XP it worked partly fine however. It would load, and I was able to boot into Linux. When attempting to choose Windows, it would come back with an error and instrust me to use CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart. Since I know enough about computers and windows, I knew that booting from the sda drive would get me into windows. So I attempted this and chose boot order to boot from sda first. Succesfully booted to windows. Now to be sure I would at least be able to get into both systems I restarted the computer. It started up default by reading hda, and attempted to load GRUB. This brings me back to what I explained about error 5. So now I can get into windows by setting my sda to boot first, but I can no longer get into Linux. I had this problem before when I first tried installing SuSe. Someone told me to reinstall it so I did. To no avail apparently since I still have the same problem. Any help is greatly greatly appreciated!! Thanks!

[devils casper]

where did you install GRUB? in sda or hda?





casper

[SMix]

installed to hda which in my computers boot order, is the first drive, then hdb, then sda last

[devils casper]

GRUB Error 5 : "Disk geometry error"
This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if your disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8GB in general).

boot up from SuSe installation CD/DVD and select 'Boot from Hard Disk' option. in terminal/konsole, execute this

su -
fdisk -l

post the output here.





casper

[SMix]

I think you didn't realize I can't even get into Linux ... so I had to take a literal screen shot ... LoL ... lemme know if this is legible ... and sorry for taking so long ... school is a ***** lately ... finals week ... ciao

[devils casper]

I think you didn't realize I can't even get into Linux ... so I had to take a literal screen shot ... LoL ... lemme know if this is legible ... and sorry for taking so long ... school is a ***** lately ... finals week ... ciao

as i suggested earlier, boot up from SuSe Installation CD and Select 'Boot from Harddisk' option. does SuSe boot up properly?








casper

[SMix]

no thats part of the problem ... I can't even get into Linux ... even when using that DVD it gives me the same error ... so I can't even get my Linux to boot ... its frustrating having it there ... just can't get to it ... LoL