Can't boot

[shenberry]

I will let you get your laughs out first, but this is a real serious problem.
I deleted openSUSE, trough partition magic. I done this before, but I used windows console to do it.

Using partition magic, I forgot to disable Grub from being my bootloader. I really never thought it had anything to do with windows, since grub was installed on my HDA1 drive and not my SDA1 on drive.

Great deleted openSuse, and seen the problem got scared as hell, than reinstalled openSuse thinking the problem would go away. No go. Still looking for Grub, after reinstallation. Great thing about openSuse installation ISO is when you hit abort allows you to start the root installation manually.

Great back using openSuse now. This time i had a wonderful installation, finding the printer, sound card and everything else. (It has never found my printer or sound card during installation).

Main question obviously is, How do i delete that bad grub, or how am i able to load windows again; if not both windows and openSuse?

I had to correct a problem with my installation of openSuse that why i deleted in the first place. I have deleted it before and never had this problem. Even when I used to delete slackware using Lilo never had this problem. Hopefully someone can help me.

Windows needs to step up and be more linux like. It not even hard to get openSuse to boot, even though i have to go through five steps to do it. Thank you.

[felipe1982]

Main question obviously is, How do i delete that bad grub, or how am i able to load windows again; if not both windows and openSuse?

After a quick search in the forums, you may enjoy finding the solution posted a million times
boot from your windows installation cd and press "R" and you will be set to the "R"ecovery console. There you type fixmbr and windows will replace grub and install a MS bootloader. Reboot, and windows will load automatically.

[shenberry]

Great that solves windows lol.
I still need grub to boot opensuse the easy way. I am not ditching it now since after i done something wrong with booting windows. It actually works to my expectations, of how it should have been from jump start.
The five closest matches i found didn't solve both.I know i was more worried about windows when i created the post sorry about that. I just mounted the partition i needed and still did what i had to do. It just that i am not the only user of this pc and others want be able to function around my mistakes so easily.
I knew I could have used the Cd to restore windows normal configuration, just wanted to see if their was another solution available also.

I will never just be running windows again, so i need something still to boot windows and opensuse for now. I might add slackware to it since after that all three operating systems will be running correctly. Thank you and sorry if I made you fill that you were wasting your time responding to my post.

[shenberry]

Thanks for the help. I still had to disconnect my other hard drives before fixmbr actually worked lol. I will just let windows boot, with its natural mbr from hda1 and have all my other distros boot from Grub on sda1. Thanks for all the help.

[devils casper]

I still had to disconnect my other hard drives before fixmbr actually worked lol. I will just let windows boot, with its natural mbr from hda1 and have all my other distros boot from Grub on sda1.

you could add an entry of Windows in Suse's menu.lst file for dual booting. check this thread. in this way, Windows remains intact and you will have dual boot setup.





Casper

[shenberry]

Thanks, I always thought a dual boot was when both operating systems started at the same time. I see it is only when selecting which one you want to run. Thank You. I am satisfied with the way it boots for now, I will configure the correct boot after i install pclinux correctly.

Is it logical to have grub installed on more than one hard drive?

[felipe1982]

I will never just be running windows again, so i need something still to boot windows and opensuse for now. I might add slackware to it since after that all three operating systems will be running correctly. Thank you and sorry if I made you fill that you were wasting your time responding to my post.

sorry if i sounded snarky ... and only "I" can waste my own time I chose to click on your thread, and then answer it. I'm still learning lots about linux anyways, so answering other people's threads helps me learn in the process. Time well used! Dual-booting is running the computer with more than one OS installed. Upon boot up a menu appears allowing the user to select which OS s/he would like to boot. AFAIK running two os's at the same time is challenging, if not impossible.

[gogalthorp]

sorry if i sounded snarky ... and only "I" can waste my own time I chose to click on your thread, and then answer it. I'm still learning lots about linux anyways, so answering other people's threads helps me learn in the process. Time well used! Dual-booting is running the computer with more than one OS installed. Upon boot up a menu appears allowing the user to select which OS s/he would like to boot. AFAIK running two os's at the same time is challenging, if not impossible.

Challenging maybe but it is easy to install VMWare server and run two or more OS's at the same time. But one warning to do it smoothly you need lots of RAM. I first installed with 1 Gig on Suse 10.1 64 but found that XP caused a lot of disk thrashing and the associated delays moving up to 2Gig and XP runs very smoothly. And it is so cool to see XP boot up in a Suse window

[shenberry]

Challenging maybe but it is easy to install VMWare server and run two or more OS's at the same time. But one warning to do it smoothly you need lots of RAM. I first installed with 1 Gig on Suse 10.1 64 but found that XP caused a lot of disk thrashing and the associated delays moving up to 2Gig and XP runs very smoothly. And it is so cool to see XP boot up in a Suse window

Man I should have never stop using Linux. I just tryed like 12 minutes ago to try to get VMWare to work for pclinxos, I had no idea what i was downloading. In any case it was a no go. When using winzip, i thought it extracted completely. When using the virtual machine; it say cannot find some type of file. Okay great i used winrar next to extract the files; Winrar said there is not enough space. How can 50 GB = not enough space? lol. I am happy just to hear that somebody got theres to work and i have to catch up on alot of more stuff.

I so see why epople use linux once again, thanks for all the help. I will properly try a virtual operating system later on in life; but now i am good with my three operating systems.

[gogalthorp]

Man I should have never stop using Linux. I just tryed like 12 minutes ago to try to get VMWare to work for pclinxos, I had no idea what i was downloading. In any case it was a no go. When using winzip, i thought it extracted completely. When using the virtual machine; it say cannot find some type of file. Okay great i used winrar next to extract the files; Winrar said there is not enough space. How can 50 GB = not enough space? lol. I am happy just to hear that somebody got theres to work and i have to catch up on alot of more stuff.

I so see why epople use linux once again, thanks for all the help. I will properly try a virtual operating system later on in life; but now i am good with my three operating systems.

If you do here is some advise. Set aside some space for the VMs. I created a 30 gig partition and mounted it as VM. It was the original area where XP was when I dual booted

Download the RPM (100 meg) then follow the instruction on the site for installation. Unless you know exactly what you doing take the defaults except for the location of the Virtual machines. Direct that to the location you set aside for the VM's. It defaults to root and unless you installed an unusualy large root you need to put it where you have some extra space since this is here the virtual disk that will hold you VM will live.

I've been running this for about 4 months without problems. absolutly solid. Note do not expect to run highend games in Windows like this, the VM does not support 3D accel. But any productivity type app should be no trouble at all. I write windows apps using Xbase++ (Clipper) and every thing is great.

BTW you can copy and paste between OS's also you can use the network to copy files between OS's