Running SuSE, Mandrake, and several other flavors of linux for as longs as I can remember. But I need to install windows for design projects.


I have read the forum a bit, and noticed that kernel 2.6 has a few bugs when setting up a dual boot system on one hard drive. When I have tried to setup a dual boot XP/SuSE system on one hard drive, I get an error during the SuSE installation, it tries to load windows during the reboot of the SuSE install. How do you install a SuSE/XP dual boot system on one hard drive. I know its been asked before, but if someone could shed a bit of light on the subject, that would be great.

I have tried:
Installing SuSE 9.2 second
Setting windows as the default boot loader option

I guess there are many ways to install a dual-boot system. Maybe you should describe the error you get in more detail.

The parted bug in 9.1 has been repaired in 9.2, so windows should boot normally after the SuSE installation.

To bring your question to a point: you would like to know how to partition your system ?! I always answer this question the following way:

If you have the chance, install Windows without using the whole disc. Leave the rest of the disc free and install SuSE. Yast will recognize the free space and partition it. That's it.

If you need to resize your Winows partiton, you may use the Yast partitioner (parted) or any other resize tool (AFAIK, KNOPPIX comes with qparted, Partition Magic 8 is the commercial alternative).

Thanks for your reponse.

No, I am comfortable with partitioning my system.

I have tried several things:

Installing XP then, installing SuSE 9.2. The error I get when I try to boot into windows is:

nskernel32.dll not found - not sure exactly the file name, im 90% that is it...I can get for you after work

--

I got a similar error when trying to boot into Windows after a SuSE installtion,

[some].dll file not found.

--

To remedy this I noticed many post said to make sure windows was the default boot option. In YaST I marked this as default, but no luck.

About partitioning, I am starting with a blank drive.

I do not care about my install.

So each time I have installed, I have blown away my XP install, and did the same with SuSE install

YaST does recognize my windows installation as well and adds it to the GRUB entry.

There is a reboot on disc 1, that occurs, and I think that is where the problem happens. Maybe I have to set the windows partition to inactive?

It would be helpful, if you could provide some partitioning details. Do you use primary partions for Windows? What system comes first? If SuSE boots, you could post the output of fdisk -l ('l' like in loppypop), your /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst.

I can't promise to help, but I'll try

If you are unlucky, then the resize has corrupted your Winows partition (resizing is always dangerous).

I will get a print out using knoppix...when i get home...

but i never resized...my partitions were created before my install. i was using my partition table from my previous installation.


but each other time, i have created a new parition table. but each time only installing windows on the same 25 gb partition....

bit of a noob, but have lots of practise demonstrating how good at dual booting suse is to colleagues at work... basically if we have a pc or laptop sitting round of a reasonable spec i have thrown suse 9.1 personnel onto it! ;-) has annoyed a few windoze abusers but most like it..

all i have had to do is make sure the disc is big enough for suse and swap file area... so if i was going from a clean disc, id make sure it was very clean by re fdisking it with xp. a disk of 25 gb split it into 3/4 partions. give yerself 10 for the xp. and 10 for suse the rest for swap and/or a bit of space to play with later..dont even format the space for suse... let the suse installer sort it all out.. change the grub loader to xp during the confirm install bit..

if you get an error message about the ntkernal being missing then your system is using the boot.ini file and more than likely if you open the boot.ini file it is pointing to the wrong partition....

basically this *** multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

you could even try and re edit the boot.ini even guess the correct partition....?

hope this helps, if not i'll crawl back under my noobshell and leave you guys to sort it out! :-)

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 261 2096451 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda2 262 2872 20972857+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 2873 4047 9438187+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 * 4113 7298 25591545 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Disk /dev/hdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 24319 195342336 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 1 6528 52436097 83 Linux
/dev/hdb6 6529 13055 52428096 83 Linux
/dev/hdb7 13056 19583 52436128+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb8 19584 24281 37736653+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

andy_P

great suggestion! I edited my boot.ini file and pointed it to the correct partition(4) in knoppix, and Im finishing up my install right now...

Thanks for both of your suggestions