Hi all!

Long time no see, look at this
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Well,

I am coming back with a problem It is about boot loader - neither grub nor lilo are helping me. this is my configuration&situation like five days ago:

hdc is a quantum fireball 6gb hdd with single partition. it was C drive and it has had MBR on it, though i've never used it as an OS partition, but as a temp storage.

sda is a maxtor 80gb hdd, with two partitions: D with winXP system on it, and E as a file repository.

everything was working just fine, until... i installed SuSE 10.0 onto the first, smaller quantum drive. as i was going through the installation, it seemed suspicious that grub never asked me about booting windows - and once i finished installation, i realized i can't boot into my windows box anymore. not that i need it sooooo bad, but i'd still like to be able to boot windows w/out reinstalling the system again. however, from SuSE i am perfectly able to browse D and E partitions - under windows folder drives are mounted and files accessible. nothing seems to be damaged, except that i cannot configure them back to get them working with dual boot. i have run yast's boot loader trying several configurations, but whenever i try to add windows partition, it gets stuck on (chain loading hd1/0), 1 and - that's it. i can't boot back into the windows box. i can browse drives, i can't boot windows. i've tried reading around and phoned couple of linxperts before i posted but this seems to be a custom problem, so don't be angry at my n00b question

thank you all in advance for help, greetings

p.s. i've got more problems, like not being able to set up 3d on my ati radeon 9550, but i go one thing at a time

post post scriptum: another thing i forgot to mention is that i don't have a floppy drive at all (never bought it nor i want it). i also have two ide drives - cd-rw and dvd-rw, respectivly E and F drives before, in windows. i was thinking (though, haven't tried it before consulting with you experts) how about if i try yast's boot loaders' option of "restore MBR of the hard disk" and than run suse from CD, and reconfigure LILO? though, i am not sure if it'd work. what happens if i try restore with windows cd.... hm. there is several options, but i don't want to go through reinstallations of either of my systems, i just want to make them work, so before i mess with those radical solutions, i thought someone would have some... easier solution.

thanks for all the attention to my fuzzy post, and for all the help, in advance, thanks a lot.

p.p.p.s.
when i try and change at boot time to my windows at sda1 or sda2 or sda5, i just get stuck with the screen saying "chainloader (hd1,1)+1" and that's it.

You have same problem

ok, emerson, thanks a lot - your input was wery helpful, though i am not there yet, bear with me a little longer. with this

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

i was able to boot the right partition, however i got "ntloader is missing" error in windows. so, for windows i should copy ntldr and ntdetect.com to the root of the primary disk - which is right now - suse disk and first partition is used for swap and second one for native linux partition...

what now? is there an easier solution than wiping both drives and redoing it properly?

Are you sure you are booting right partition? Looks like you are booting correct HDD but not partition. GRUB names first partition 0, second 1, etc. You may need to set rootnoverify (hd1,1). If you cannot get it working please post output of

i tried that already before asking here, thought of it by myself, when i changed it to (hd1,1) it was stuck displaying ...

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,1)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

and when i went back to (hd1,0) i got "ntldr is missing" again. what do you think about using recovery console to retrieve windows partition and get it working, than to use suse cd to reinstall grub and try to re-configure it to work with both OSes? my doubt is in the fact that ntldr is supposed to go to the root of the first drive but i am pretty sure it is larger than MBR, therefore if i go through recovery i might damage suse installation, and than i am stuck with reinstalling it... if i hav e to reinstall, i'd rather do it with the windows than linux, cuz my winbox was getting cranky before and linux is fresh and updated like, yesterday..

Still waiting for output of fdisk -l ...

no problem, i will post it as soon as i get home.

Disk /dev/hdc: 6448 MB, 6448619520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 784 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 129 1036161 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdc2 * 130 784 5261287+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1912 15358108+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 1913 9963 64669657+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1913 9963 64669626 7 HPFS/NTFS
linux:~ #

now, what do i do? i tried setting both sda1 and sda2 as boot, didn't work (sda2 or sda5 is file partition, sda1 is system i want but can't boot)

OK, Windows is hd1,0 for GRUB then. The error you get is about missing/damaged Windows bootup files which are boot.ini, ntloader and ntdetect.com if I recall correctly. Are these files present in sda1? In case they are damaged I'd recommend disconnecting your Linux HDD temporarily, boot up using XP CD and use Windows recovery procedure to fix your Windows installation. Also I suggest you connect your Linux HDD as hda. There is no need to reinstall anything. All you need to do is edit /boot/grub/device.map and /etc/fstab to reflect the change.

no, files aren't present. really wierd thing is .... history of installation. i have had originally 6gb + 40gb both ide drives, with win2000 installation on the smaller, hdc drive. later i bought larger sata disk, and replaced 40 gig with 80 gig drive (sda device). once i was done with installing xp onto first partition of the new drive, i realized that mbr, ntldr and netdetect.com remained on the c drive, which was smaller one (hdc drive). that didn't bother me, but i couldn't have taken it out - if i tried, i'd get "ntldr missing" error (so i realized files are on the c drive). i couldn't fix the installation even from recovery console if i'd take C (smaller) disc out. i simply let it stay in the computer and didn't really use it except for the temp small drive for downloads, sharing, etc. now i installed suse onto that drive...

ok, seems i am able to hit the right partition with the GRUB, i think now i need to look for help soewhere on the windows forums i need to move NTLDR and netdetect.com onto the D drive and it should work fine, i think.

I am done with device.map, now i have to try to fix this thing with ntldr. Thanks a million, you were very helpful.

eemmmmm.... i can't boot either disk now. i booted up rescue disk, what do you think - is it gonna work again if i just edit device.map again? problem is - it says it can't find a kernel at sda2 anymore...

Your kernel is on hda2, not sda2. Looks like you got it wrong in device.map. You have one IDE disk and one SATA. Your BIOS is set to boot from IDE (keep it this way). This means your IDE disk must be hd0 for GRUB and SATA disk is hd1.

Sorry, wrong letter, lapsus keyborda. It was saying it coulnd't find kernel at /dev/hda2... could i just go back and edit device.map so that my boot device is dev/hdc2 ? To return it to yesterdays state - to have at least something bootable? Or if you know, from here, what would I edit in device.map or first.1st so my machine would boot linux again?

It still feels like I am in for reinstallation...of both systems, unfortunately. Can't figure this out, if it keeps me until weekend like this, I will just simply go and reinstall. I'll rather spend 3 hrs with reinstalling everything and get it working than to drag this for days and still not get it functional...

First, run fdisk -l again to see if your IDE is really hda now. Then, you need to check if everything is OK in menu.lst (grub.conf). There must be correct root=/dev/hda2 in kernel command line. Reinstalling everything because of misconfigured bootloader isn't feasible IMO.