SuSE 10 won't boot without CD

Wow... well thats a lot to absorb. Still not sure why suse 9 figured it all out but 10 is having such a heart attack with it, also doesn't make sense why it will boot if I choose "boot from HD" on the install cd but if I just let it boot with no cd it just says "GRUB" once and doesn't do anything. Either way I checked my bios and my boot order is:
Floppy
CD-ROM
SCSI
boot from other device = enabled

My PCI card is a Highpoint Rocket Raid 1520. So just so I am clear.... where exactly do you believe SuSE 10 installed my bootloader? Is there a way to simply get YAST to reinstall the bootloader in the right place, if in fact it has put it somewhere else? Also what would happen if I through in my winXP cd and asked it to fix the mbr? I just don't want to lose my Linux install. All of my windoz stuff is accessible from Linux but not the other way around so if windoz kills my boot access I am screwed.

#edit amends original here
PLs read my next reply on your raid card b4 reading this one
I am leaving this post here as it still has some relevance but you won't like the next reply

#original message starts here
I am glad you mentioned your bios and that suse 9 worked (with your current bios settings)

to be clear, which drive is scsi?
(2) is it possible that you have a sata drive that the bios can not see unless you chose scsi?
3) R U experienced at saving your settings and playing with bios raid - scsi settings to see what must be enabled to get the sata to work...
The reason I ask is, for my award bios to see my non-raided sata the bios seeks out IDE drives first which I have been unable to stop, then seeks out raid and then finds raid enabled then finds the sata
yep it finds my non-raided only by enable raid in bios first

grub only on the screen means grub is in the bios boot order drive mbr (but which one is not known from your data) and grub is unable to find its booting files.

so grub could be in both drive mbrs, unlikely I know but the bios tries to boot up drive 1 and detects a bootloader then jumps to the booting files, this is the same whether its grub or ntldr.

4) your question is fair on where is bootloader but irrelevant as I can be 50% wrong.
The initial listing of hdONE suggests suse put it on hd1.
you could study my trouble-shooter I suggest printing it out but the only true way to tell where grub is if and only if there is one grub in one mbr......is to use the dd command its a longer reply so I will post it only if you feel up to it.

5) q on MS overwriting mbr, is a natural fear when you can get some file access but in the long run, you are better off learning how to recover so time to be blunt again

a knoppix or kanotix cd includes tools (programs)
partimage (image save/restore of partitions will save your bacon but is a big backup solution)
qtparted (partition manager like partition magic)
a text editor (to change your menu.lst file etc)
bash commands (for more basic stuff)

What I am suggesting is allow MS to overwrite your mbr and put ms bootloader into the mbr and hopefully find or restore ntldr.exe and its com files (the booting files for ms) AND I am hoping you will understand and swap the drives to make the fastest biggest drive the first drive but we need some more info from you on how bios savvy you may be.....the swap is easy but playing with your bios may not excite you?

So even if ms bootloader then fails, grub to the rescue as either suse or kanotix or knoppix has a rescue mode. I don't use suse so will just say with kanotix you do this
load kanotix bios boot order is optical b4 hard drives
open a terminal
su
grub
root (hd0,3).......as per my tut if drive cable swapped
setup (hd0)

then with root powers on kanotix edit the menu.lst to change the hd numbers from 1 to 0

6) the decision is yours.......but in the long run you will have great confidence if you learn how bootloaders work and know how to fix them. There are always things that can go wrong but more knowledge is better than nil ?

I am suggesting that we try to fix your ms bootloader first then overwrite mbr with a new bootloader so the chainload command to ms will work.

Feel free to read up on suse rescue mode and my grub signature and maybe go to a MS forum or MS site and see what you can learn about the boot process for ms?

just searched the LQ hcl and this is your raid issue
Works on kernel 2.6.8 with the Open Source drivers, but can't seem to currently work on 2.6.11-8

check to see what kernel suse 10 is running

so now me thinks its a kernel issue and nothing to do with grub......
we are back looking at how savvy you are with playing with the bios. so you need the pci card to run the new drive?

the sata should have a small cable and now me thinks you may need to go to your motherboard site to see if a bios upgrade will give you enhanced options from scsi to
scsi and sata

and ooops why did I not see earlier that you had a ide and a sata so ignore my waffle on swapping cables silly me
oh well to err is very grubby of me

wow thanks for all the research you have done to try an help me. Really appreciate it. As far as bios goes, I have no fears and have played with every setting imaginable on this and many other mb's. As far as the boot order goes in the bios I don't believe the scsi setting has any relivance as I do not have any scsi drives. The "boot from other device = enabled" is what allows my SATA drive to be bootable (I beleive :s). Now another strange thing that I didn't mention was that this is the second time I have installed SuSE 10, I installed it a week ago but had the resolution problem I noted above (only I didn't know it at the time) and figured I had a bad install so I reinstalled it. But that first install booted, windows wouldn't, but grub worked properly at least I am pretty sure I didn't have the cd in.... but not 100% certain of it. Either way thought I would let you know in case it makes a difference. Also as far as bios upgrades go I have the latest revisions. So if what you are saying is true I guess I just have to wait for a new kernel to fix the problem, and boot with the cd in the drive in the mean time?

yes and no.....I read but did not comprehend you had a sata drive my bad,

you have 2 mbrs so if the bios can boot to the ide with grub or ntldr in that then the booting files can exist on the same drive or the sata.
If you choose grub in the ide mbr.....abisko00 would be correct (again) in that MS needs the map command to work as its now really drive 2 but needs to think its drive 1
to recover my bad, you can see how it works in my tutorial.

now the hardware issue and the kernel I can not help you with....you will need to research at the suse site and see if the have a HCL or a bugfix stuff.....so its possilbe you may have to look at suse kernel upgrade......or see the vanilla kernel and see if you can compile one with the pci device ENABLED in the kernel.

However more questions are...if one of your installs of suse 10 worked WITHOUT the cd in drive.....then we know its not a kernel issue cos grub worked and kernel worked. You may want to waste some time doing this
write notes......redo install with grub on ide drive no cd boot Y or n
.....redo with grub in sata boot Y or no
to speed up and keep consistent...install everything so you can go away and have a cuppa.

Unfortuantely you will not be allowed to create any /boot partition on ide drive at this stage, as we are troubleshooting and proving or disproving that suse 10 without cd can read your sata.

Take your time, and thankyou for your patience.

I don't have a pci card device but I agree that its likely that the bios is looking for a scsi device direct (and sata ) does not find one so then treats your pci device as other.

I might add (waffle) that MS has trouble with sata as well.

I am running SuSE 10 and had the same problem as well, but found a way to fix it (it was luck, rather than skills . It was a new install. Not sure if what i did will work for you but probably worth a try.

Here is my device.map file:

(hd1) /dev/sda
(hd0) /dev/hda

/dev/hda only has some data files, /dev/sda has the windows partition (sda1) and the linux partition (sda6)

When I run Yast -> Boot loader, it says my boot loader location is on /dev/hda. So I click on the "Boot Loader Installation" tab, and then the "Boot Loader Installation Details" button near the bottom. There at the list of hard drives I swapped the order of my 2 drives. Click OK, and then click Finish. Now my device.map file looks like this:

(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/hda

This is the only change I made. I tried reboot and viola !! It works ! No longer need the DVD to boot.

Note: I couldn't do this in the "normal" Linux session, there seems to be some kind of bug with the Yast->Boot loader module, and it refuses to save any of my changes after I clicked Finish. The way I worked around this is to use the CD/DVD to boot it up, select installation, when it gets to the stage where it asks you whether to do a new install or update, click Others and select Repair. Then click on expert tool there is a partitioning tool there. And it worked fine when I made my changes there.

I hope you can sort it out.

nice reply person with a cheeky user name.

now finally if its a hardware pci issue......you may want to read the faq and download the generic driver from
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/

note there is a driver for sata in non-raid but its the wrong suse number so see if the readme for the generic is of any help
I am on dial up so won't download to have a look, not much point really and it not a GPL driver so support may be umm lacking at LQ forum

OMG wow I can't possibly thank you enough ilovewindows!!!! Not only did it fix the boot problem with linux where I needed the cd but it fixed windows as well. All is well now. Would have thanked you earlier but I just made the change, got a new Apple Powerbook and have been using that, + midterms + linux is so much nicer to access remotely than windows so I havn't really been pushed to bring it back . Either way your post just saved me HOURS more toiling in front of the box. Thanks

Glad it worked for ya!

One thing I notice after this "fix" is that my Windows XP has messed up all the drive letters (like my E drive is now J, F is now K etc), so half of my apps doesn't start anymore.

I have to go into Control Panel and Admin Tools, and then go to storage management to manually re-assign the old drive letters. Now everything seems to work OK.