Hi all,

I have set up a dual boot menu system on my laptop so that I am offered a choice of OS: linux or windows vista. This has worked well until today ...

I have been using the windows OS quite a lot recently. Today however I wanted to use the Linux OS, so I exited windows with restart and low and behold my menu has disappeared and I am back into windows again !!

It seems as though windows has somehow removed that boot menu forcing me to use windows. I tried shutting down windows and then starting by manually pressing th start button but still I am always taken to the windows OS, the boot menu has simply gone ...

I tried to intervene and look at BIOS etc using F9, F10 and F11 but to no avail.

What can I do to get my boot menu back ? I am desperate to get back to my linux partition.

regards,

Steven Matthews

Which Linux OS are you using? Which bootloader did you have working? The problem can be fixed, but the above information is required.

Boot up a Linux Live CD, mount the Linux partition, remove the savedefault in Grub's /boot/grub/menu.lst and increase the timeout period then save the file.

If your Linux uses Lilo do the same on /etc/lilo.conf and recompile Lilo.

Your problem seems odd to me. Windows simply wont remove boot menu just like that on restart. Are you sure that you did nothing to mess with the boot menu?

Check whether you getting grub prompt while booting.

Also try downloading ext2/ext3 file system drivers for windows and try to locate your boot menu in Linux partition after making sure that your Linux partition is still intact with the help of disk management in Windows.

Hope this helps.

SUSE Linux enterprise server v 10.3

Boot loader? no idea

Steven M

Suse Linux used Grub bootloader. Were you using Grub bootloader or the vista bootloader? I'd assume you installed Suse on an OEM with vista? Use a Live CD or your Suse install CD and run command: fdisk -l, post the output here and post the output of the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. You will need to mount the Suse partition using the Live CD.

Here is the output of fdisk -l ...

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9c62b218

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 7799 62637435 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 18310 19255 7585792 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 19255 19458 1626112 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 7799 18310 84435557+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 7799 8060 2104452 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 8061 10671 20972826 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 10672 18309 61352203+ 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

AND the output of the /boot/grub/menu.lst file ..

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Fri Nov 14 11:22:56 UTC 2008
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,5)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 10.3
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-31-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Hitachi_HTS5425080125BB0C00WGJTNDDC-part6 vga=0x314 resume=/dev/sda5 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.5-31-default

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows 1###
title windows 1
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows 2###
title windows 2
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows 3###
title windows 3
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
chainloader (hd0,2)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 10.3
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-31-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_Hitachi_HTS5425080125BB0C00WGJTNDDC-part6 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.5-31-default


regards,

Steven M

Boot your system using the install/rescue dvd.

Type the following:

grub
root (hd0,5)
setup (hd0)
quit
reboot

You didn't answer the question about which bootloader you were using, Grub or vista's BCDEdit. Do you want to use Grub to boot both systems? Why do you have three entries for vista? Is it one installation of vista?

If you want to boot with Grub you can re-install it to the master boot record.

Just noticed mdg wrote what I was planning to, that should work.

Hi MDG,

Your a genious !

That all worked fine - my menu is back ...

Thanks a lot,

Steven M

try to check, if your bind9 running in chroot, if you have created log directory.

Thanks

Yusan