SuSE 9.1 / Windows XP suddenly dual booting fails
 

Hi, after spending some time with my SuSE 9.1 / XP machine a couple weeks ago I was finally able to make dual booting work. My /boot/grub/menu.lst:

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

Last night I added a new CDR. Currently I have a Sony DRU510a (now slave) and the new Lite-On CDR (master). After I installed it, SuSE picked up the changes just fine and installed the necessary configuration. Now the system will not boot in to Windows XP. It hangs on grub and displays the config listed above as its hanging. What could have happened?

try putting in cd 1 and booting from that. Go into the new installation, and when it gives you the option select repair existing installation. Let it run its checks and prompt it to reinstall the bootloader. I have no idea why you are having issues after installing a cdr, but try it out to see if it works.

Tried that, no dice.

What is the procedure to replace Grub with Lilo in SuSE 9.1?

Thanks much

Well I wouldn't jump into replacing grub just yet, unless your really intent on it. We should have tried this first, but in Yast under System, click on boot loader configuration. If you click on reset you can have Yast automatically reread configuration from disk. Try that out. If not clicking on edit configuration files will show you the info in your grub menu.lst. Post that up here and we'll see what its missing. Since you were messing with drives tho, is it possible you pulled the plug or have a jumper mis-set on the drive with your xp install?

this is what's in mine for xp under menu.lst.

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

for the config file (doesn't have anything to do with booting XP.):
root (hd0,1)
install --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/stage1 d (hd0) /boot/grub/stage2 0x8000 (hd0,1)/boot/grub/menu.lst
quit

The hard disk configuration is completely separate from the IDE channel that runs my cd recorder and dvd recorder. Here is how my disks and drives are laid out:

Primary IDE Channel: (1) 140gig IDE Drive set as master. This drive has Windows XP and nothing else.

Secondary IDE Channel: (1) CD Recorder set as master, (1) DVD Recorder set as slave.

SATA 1: (1) 180 gig SATA drive. This has grub, SuSE 9.1, and nothing else.

Here is everything that has happened so far:

1) System was originally configured as noted above, except there was no SATA drive installed. Windows XP was running, nothing else.

2) Grabbed 64-bit SuSE and decided I'd dual boot. Installed the SATA drive.

3) Ran in to problems with SuSE install hanging. Read that there is some bug when trying to install with two recordable drives so pulled the CDR out of the box and set the DVD Recorder as master.

4) Fired up SuSE install with noacpi option set, install went fine. It detected my Windows installation and created a grub menu item for it.

5) Linux would boot, XP would not. Found on the net that it might be useful to try a menu.lst holding values like this:

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

6) Installed the grub config as noted above, everything worked great. XP booted with no problems as did SuSE.

7) Wanted my CDR back in the box so installed it, set it to master, set DVD Recorder to slave.

8) Booted up SuSE, it picked up the new cdr/dvdr configuration and prompted me to accept the changes which I did accept.

9) Next time I tried to boot XP, it failed.

10) Looked over my grub config files, nothing looked whacky.

11) Ran the XP cd with repair installation option. Ran fixmbr and fixboot. Rebooted the box, still hangs on grub when booting to XP.

12) Ran YaST, chose reset/reread config from disk, as expected nothing changed, it simply re-read the configuration from disk. Saved anyway, rebooted. XP still will not boot.

* Still have not tried booting from the SuSE DVD installation media. Not sure it will boot now that the CDR is installed again. If it does not, I won't be getting anywhere by removing the CDR and attempting to repair the boot loader .

SuSE is aware of this problem and have posted a solution on their web site. Here is the link:
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...booting91.html

From their page:

I tried to proceedures listed on the page and it did not work for me. But hopefully this will shed some light on the situation.

firefox2501

Hi ticker,
just hold on, do not re-install or repair anything if SuSE says it is Okay...

firefox2501, I do not think this is problem in the partition table as the problem occurs when the both IDE channels are full. If one of the IDE channels has one slot free, the problem does not occur. So I consider it hardware problem and not software nor partition table one.

Here's my background which almost exactly meets the situation of ticker. I do have two IDE HDDs (this is the first difference - ticker has one SATA drive), and two IDE DVD drives (one DVD Player and one DVD Burner, DVDP is master, DVDB is slave on IDE channel 2, that's the second difference ). I tried to have dual boot with SuSE 9.0 and Win2k and booting into Win2k didn't work - it just hangs on the screen displaying


booting Windows...
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1


I did resolved this problem with this strange and curious solution (only Tux knows where I got the inspiration for it)


booting Windows...
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1


And this took be directly into Windows boot screen, the OS boot just normaly and start went okay.
By Tux, I've tried almost any other combination of mapping the disks, using rootnoverify and chainloading but only this one gave me the success.

My OS dual boot is as follows:
on hda I've Win2k, on hdb is SuSE, primary boot device set in BIOS is hdb, so that's the reason I use rootnoverify (hd1,0) to refer to the Windows drive (for GRUB, the primary boot device has the number 0, the secondary boot device has the number 1 and etc. it has nothing to do with the Linux assumption for hda, hdb and etc.).

So ticker, just give it a try, prior to reinstall/repair anything

Kind regards,
sbogus