Windows - Bound and Gagged

[LinuxBound]

I have an HP Compaq nx6235 Notebook, which was happily running Windows Vista Home Premium, until I finally got around to loading Linux openSUSE 11.1 from a DVD issued with a magazine last year. I now have a problem, because my Windows Vista has been wrapped up in the Linux partitioning system. I know it is located at dev/sda1 and that it is an HPFS/NTFS filetype, thanks to Linux Partitioning Tool. Now I need someone professional to guide me through the steps to unbind my Windows and create a dual boot drive on my notebook, so that I can happily play with both systems. I am newbie, so the instructions should be as clear and simple as possible. Thanking you in advance for your patience and understanding.

LinuxBound.

[meton_magis]

is there a bootscreen that shows up when you start the system that alows you to select Suse, or "Windows" or possible "Other OS". try that one.

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome.
I think first you need to explain how you installed Linux, did you install it by inserting the DVD and rebooting?
If you can boot up Suse, open a terminal window and issue this command as root, or use sudo, post the results back to this thread.

fdisk -l

This will tell us what your partition structure looks like.

[linuxforever]

If you have dev/sda1 in NTFS that's the windows partition.
This usually happens when you install suse.
It's then a question of the right way of booting.
And that's done by the boot manager.
He only has to point at the right windows partition.
This is done by the GRUB file menu.lst.

You don't need to unbind anything as you call it.
Everything is still there.

[hatebreed]

opensuse 11.1 uses grub 2 so there is no menu.lst file, it's the grub.cfg file he needs to use. Shouldn't be to hard, you can try update-grub in a terminal window and see if it finds your windows partition. Or you can manually edit the grub.cfg file and add

menuentry "windows"
root=(drive location here)
chainloader +1

I haven't tried this when the partition is inside the linux partition though so don't know if the manual way would work like that.

[linuxforever]

Well, I have one machine with opensuse 11.1 on it.
And it has and uses a menu.lst.

Normally dev/sda1 means the first partition on the first HDD.
And in this case windows is on it.
This is usually the case.
But fdisk -l will give the exact information.
As already has been said.

[LinuxBound]

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 4348 34917277 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 4349 7296 23679810 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 82 Linux swap/Solaris
/dev/sda6 83 Linux
dev/sda7 7296 83 Linux

Hope this is of some assistance, it escapes me.......all I want is to access the sda1, it seems a whole lot of palaver to go through, why can't Linux just admit that NTFS exists and enjoy sharing?

[LinuxBound]

Well, I have one machine with opensuse 11.1 on it.
And it has and uses a menu.lst.

Normally dev/sda1 means the first partition on the first HDD.
And in this case windows is on it.
This is usually the case.
But fdisk -l will give the exact information.
As already has been said.

sorry old sun, this version, no doubtedly updated through the yin-yang by being connected to the internet does not repond to much of anything, trying to make anything work is like trying to start a fire with water and a rock. the root terminal cannot find /boot/grub/menu.lst because

[linuxforever]

Well what you got is what normally happens.

/dev/sda1 is the windows partition.
/dev/sda2 is the extended partition on which are:
/dev/sda5 which is a linux swap partition and
/dev/dsa6 and 7 which are linux partitions.
This is the way linux calls partitions.

But for the rest you have to tell exactly what you get when you boot.
The boot screens etc.
What do you have when you have booted.
In that way we might help you to solve the problem.
At this moment everything is still there including windows.
The only fuzz is caused by the boot manager.

There is always a way to restore the windows boot manager (if one wants it to call so).
But you have to boot in the windows command line.
There were two commands available:
fixmbr and fixboot.
But I'am not aware if they are still used in vista.
However I don't think you will need them.

[hatebreed]

your right linuxforever, the system I have with opensuse 11.1 is using the grub 2 from ubuntu to boot, sorry for that. editing the menu.lst is much easier. you should be able to manually add without a hitch, as long as you point to the correct drive. and actually the windows partition isn't really inside the linux partition, it's in it's own partition on the same physical drive. this is the way every installer does the partitioning, via root and swap and so forth. personally I would try to use grub 2 so you can do the auto update feature and see if this will detect your windows drive. manually adding windows might not work because you no longer have the windows boot loader on the drive and if you do the fixmbr and fixboot then it will overwrite your grub loader.