Dual Boot - XP & Suse 9.1

johnnytriumph · 04-05-2005, 05:39 AM

Hi there,

this is probably a popular subject but after an hour of googling "I still haven't found what I'm looking for..." so here goes.

I just set up Suse 9.1. on a PC (which already had a brand new (and clean) installation of Windows XP, serv.p. 2)

The hard disk had not been fully partitioned so I let Suse complete the installation automatically.

When the computer starts, a menu comes up offering the user to choose between Linux, Windows XP and some safe mode

The problem is that the user want's (for some strange reason right?) to make Windows start up by default (instead of the current Linux)

This is what boot.ini looks like:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

If I'm correct, all the user needs to add is another line, stating where to find the linuxboot - Since I'm not a computer expert (and neither is the user) and I have found misleading answers to my question via Google, I'm not sure what should be added or/and if something else needs to be done and I don't want to screw up anything so I would be most grateful if someone had the heart to look at this and tell me what to add to the boot.ini file

abisko00 · 04-05-2005, 06:18 AM

If this is a standard installation of SuSE Linux, the Windows bootloader is not used. Instead, the configuration file that needs to be changed is /boot/grub/menu.lst on the Linux partition. It probably looks similar to this:

Code:

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Wed Aug 18 11:04:56 2004


color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,4)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Linux
    kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5 vga=0x31a splash=verbose desktop resume=/dev/sda7 showopts
    initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
    root (hd0,1)
    chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Diskette
    root (fd0)
    chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe
    kernel (hd0,4)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0  3
    initrd (hd0,4)/boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: Speichertest###
title Speichertest
    kernel (hd0,4)/boot/memtest.bin

To make Windows the default system, you need to change the red-marked entry to 1 (if it looks different, count from 0 to the Windows-entry).