I have a problem with XP and SUSE9.1

/dev/hda1 is my NTFS XP partition
/dev/hda2 is my ReiserFS / partition
/dev/hda3 is my LinuxSwap partition

After installing SUSE9.1 I get the Grub bootloader. SUSE boots fine but WinXP no longer boots. It displays the following error:

root(hd,0,0)
filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
chainloader+1

I've tried changing the grub.conf file to noverify to see if that would help but no joy.

Is it something to do with Disk Geometry? FDISK reports that the cylinder value is greater than 1024 when you fire it up.

I've tried using the XP recovery console to rewrite the MBR but then I'm screwed completely as Grub is gone and Windows will not boot. I don't even get an NTLDR message.

Trouble is I need WinXP for my work and I was hoping that SUSE9.1 would fix some of the shortcomings of previous versions (such as NVIDIA support) and it has... but this is a bit of a showstopper for me and I'm getting really bored of reinstalling XP and then SUSE to try again...

Any help kindly appreciated (even if it means reinstalling everything one more time!)

If you are botting ok to Suse, insert the first installation cd and you can do a new install of it until it asks you what kind of installation do you need, it gives you an option to fix the boot loader if it is failing, run it and following the steps you can set it up to run Win Mx again from Grub again.

Hi thanks for the reply, but I don't think it helps :-(

Grub appears to work OK, it just doesn't boot windows properly. Since my last post, I have removed all disk partitions with FDISK and reinstalled WinXP and then SUSE 9.1. I *still* have the same problem.

Here is the output from FDISK

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155061 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 60945 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 60946 63026 1048824 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda3 63027 155061 46385640 83 Linux

and here is GRUBS menu.conf file

color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,2)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Linux
kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 vga=0x317 splash=silent desktop resume=/dev/hda2 showopts
initrd (hd0,2)/boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe
kernel (hd0,2)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3
initrd (hd0,2)/boot/initrd

Very fed up now :-(

Hi wellmt,

Would you try this one:


###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1


The message

root(hd,0,0)
filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
chainloader+1

lets me think there's mismatch in the hard disk labeling, because the device specification (hd#,M,S) is used by FreeBSD/NetBSD OSes only. Also run "parted /dev/hda" from a console and see waht disk labeling has hda there. If it s not msdos then probably you should label it as "msdos". If this can be done without to destroy the partition table - you're lucky one. If not, you must re-install all things again, after you change the disk label.

Kind regards,
sbogus

Thanks for the reply sbogus

I tried your menu.lst suggestion above but it didn't work. I ran "parted" but wasn't familar with the commands so got stuck (didn't have time to dig out a reference guide).

I think you are going along the right lines though. Somehow, PartionMagic which I used in a previous Windows installation has screwed up the disks partition tables.

I'm zero-wiping the whole disk now so hopefully that should sort out any partition problems. Then I'll reinstall WinXP and SUSE yet again.

Kind regards

Hi wellmut,

Sorry! My fault, I should have given you the right commands to see the things in parted. Here are they...

parted /dev/hda

You'll get some message saying that the disk geometry may not be the one the Linux knows and you might need to check it from the BIOS. It is safe to ignore this message. Then you'll be presented with a prompt

parted:>

Type there print and press enter. You'll get the list of partitions and their properties. The command help gives you a list of all commands parted understands.

After you install your systems it is not a bad idea to run parted and to post here the output of the print command.

Kind regards,
sbogus

I had a similar problem with booting XP after installing FC1, Try this

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

Regards,
Bambino

Thanks for the replys the both of you. Unfortunately, neither has worked.

sbogus: when I ran parted I got an error "cannot have partition outside of disk!". I tried zero-wiping the whole disk with Seagate's disk tools, but now it has gone from bad to worse. I can no longer install Windows XP at all (it won't boot after installing). SuSE installs OK but Grub won't boot windows either. Strangely when I could get Windows XP to work a couple of days ago, I could get to the windows partition within SuSE..all very strange.

Now I just have SuSE Linux on taking up my whole disk. At some point I will try and fit another HDD (it's a very small computer case) and put XP on the second disk then maybe configure grub to boot from that instead for XP.

Best Regards