If I use YaST to setup GRUB as a bootloader, it will allow me to select all the options I want. However, when I click on Finish, it just gets stuck on the 2nd of the list of processes to complete and gets stuck on 50%. I have waited for as long as 30 minutes for it to complete but I eventually had to kill the process. LILO on the other hand takes less than 30 seconds to complete the whole process.

Is it likely that GRUB would work if I install from the command line?

Is the grub rpm installed?

And yes, it works from command line as well. See:http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/0..._overview.html

Yeh the rpm is installed.

[edit] I notice that YOU is installing a GRUB patch as I type. Hopefully that will fix it.

Well that didn't fix it at all.

In fact I re-installed and tried to setup GRUB. However I got a grub 17 error when SUSE reboots after completing the 1st disk install.

So I did a re-install last night.

1. The bootloader I was using before the re-install was LILO (SUSE on hdc1 and the bootloader on the MBR of had).
2. As stated in the post above, I chose GRUB as the bootloader during the install process.
3. When it reboots after the install of Disc 1, I got a GRUB Loading error 17.
4. I then booted the installed system (SUSE 10) from the DVD to continue the install process. That finished without a further hitch.
5. Once install completed, I tried to reinstall GRUB as a bootloader both from the Repair section when loading from the DVD and from the Bootloader section in YaST. Interestingly both times it would complete and not hang at the 50% mark.
6. I then decided to load the XP Recovery Console of the XP disk and run fixmbr.
7. XP loaded without problems after that.
8. So I got frustrated by GRUB at this stage and installed LILO from the repair option (I now wish I had installed GRUB at this point to see what would have happened). LILO installed without hassle and I was able to boot into SUSE from the LILO boot menu.
9. I then ran YOU and patched the kernel amongst other things. I then thought let me try and see what happens when I try install GRUB after having run fixmbr. The process got stuck at the 50% mark.
10. So this got me wondering whether this is something to do with the kernel patch?

What I will do this evening is run fixmbr of the XP Recovery Console again. And this time I will try and install GRUB from the repair section and see what happens.

Well tried the last bit and still got a Grub Loading error 17.

I noticed that when I run mkinitrd and I run /sbin/lilo, the following appears:

Might this have anything to do with the problem?

Interestingly, I installed a second Linux distro and it's GRUB worked.

Same thing on my machine.

Would using map (hd0) (hd2) work? [XP on hda(1) and SUSE being on hdc(1)]

Or changing the bootorder in the BIOS to boot from HDD-2 and then installing GRUB on hdc?

no unless you have 3 drives....see my tut for how to trick MS with the map command but its
map (hd0) ....space....(hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)

2) there is nothing stopping you having bios boot order changed so that you use mbr drive 0 to go to its mbr and then changing to drive 1 and its mbr on a reboot....not sure that is more efficient but can be used for trouble shooting if all else fails

3) your lilo report I can not be exact as don´t use it but is suggests that when you installed grub or lilo that you put it in the PARTITION and not into the MBR otherwise lilo can not complain about boot sector.....

roughly speaking bios boots to a drive...then to its mbr then because it is too tiny (512 bytes) it jumps to the balance of its booting files....this is true of ntldr.exe and grub and me thinks lilo

Well, based on some recent experience myself... somehow when I changed the drive order even after a reinstall things show up one way druing install, another upon boot. In theory the lineup should match up evenly and cleanly, both based on boot order like this:

/dev/hda = hd0
/dev/hdb = hd1
/dev/sda = hd2

Now in my case I had something more like this because of my boot order and having two SATA drives, one of which I want as the main drive:

/dev/sda = hd0
/dev/sdb = hd1
/dev/hda = hd2

But, due to a weird thing, after I installed SuSE, gentoo, and a few other things to test around waiting for the release of SuSE 10.1 the booting was a little odd and would sometimes freeze on a reiserfs drive if my main drive wasn't set first in the boot order. I wanted my boot order to match after I did a little hardware swap(changed the SATA drives physically to SATA 0 and 1, I swapped them). I figured no big deal.

Somehow now, on Kubuntu, SuSE, and Gentoo, the boot order doesnt' match up quite right during the grub thing, with during install. During install it sees how it used to be. But upon rebooting, it sees the new proper ordering:
/dev/sdb
/dev/sda
/dev/hda

This causes an Error, and thus I have change that from the grub console to match the new hd0, hd1, and hd2.(used to be hd2, is now hd0) Go figure.

Redshirt thanks for your experience....if raided (hardware raided) grub should see the 2 raided as one drive so if you have 3 real drives it should only be hd0 and hd1.

its can be different if you use software raid and if you get a chance to see a number of motherboards say they are have in built raid but are really just software ....there is a good post at gentoo on this HYBRID raid.....yet again us mugs are tricked by the manufacturers....so I hope you have a true hardware raid card.

you may want to see if you mobo manual offers alternative raid setups in case that solves your issue....being now a cynical old man me thinks you have a hybrid raid and I have been known to be wrong heh heh

The problem was resolved by changing the Acces Mode in the BIOS from Auto to Large. The drive is a 250GB so I am guessing having left that on Auto was causing some problem. It's probably time to update my BIOS.