linux and xp on 2 sep drives help!!!

jaymunee80 · 07-28-2004, 06:23 PM

i installed windows on the first master hard drive, then I installed suse linux 9.1. on the second drive.the 2nd drive is set in slave when i boot windows just boots, i dont get a choice of what to boot. it really sux. does anyone know wut i need to do

osvaldomarques · 07-28-2004, 07:47 PM

Hi jaymunee80,
Did you install suse with your windows disk out of the machine? If yes, the suse linux was master when you installed it? Please, if it was not that way, tell us the steps you did to setup you box.

Basslord1124 · 07-28-2004, 07:49 PM

You may be able to change something in BIOS to bring Suse back up. The BIOS on one of my machines allows me to select which hard drive I want to boot.

jschiwal · 07-28-2004, 09:15 PM

You haven't said which windows you are running and which boot loader you selected during the suse install. If you rerun the suse 9.1 installer, there is an option to repair an installation. (Just after the Language selection part.) Select the last manual type of repair ( The third and last option ), and then click on the underlined line about the boot loader.

If you have windows 98 or windows ME on the master drive (hda), then you shouldn't have any problem selecting the MBR on (hda) for lilo or grub. If you have XP or NT or Win 2000, then you may want to use the NTLDR to select between the Windows or Linux.

Here is a HOWTO for doing this with LILO:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/text/Linux+NT-Loader

Here is a HOWTO for doing this with GRUB:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Multiboot-with-GRUB-2.html

jaymunee80 · 07-29-2004, 11:44 AM

suse was the master drive when i installed.

osvaldomarques · 07-29-2004, 07:05 PM

Hi jaymunee80,
There are the easy way and the hard way. The easy is you change the drives, putting the Suse as master and the XP as slave and, into Suse, configure it to boot XP. I don't know Suse, but YAST may have a way of setting an alternate boot in the graphical environment. I am a man of the keyboard. If you want to follow my suggestion and can't configure on the graphical environment, tell me and I pass the instructions to prepare the boot menu in text mode.
The hard way is a bit more complicated because some system settings will have to be changed for linux to boot and work properly on the second disk. It will be necessary to boot from cd or floppy and work in text mode before try to set it up.
Both configurations will not suffer performance penalties once set.