I recently decided to purchase Suse Personal 9.1 for my PC. I am really sick of Windows and wanted an alternative but I am not sure I made a good choice.

I installed Suse and well now I am locked on a black screen with the word GRUB_.

I called Suse and they don't really want to help. Its been three days since I have been able to boot into Windows and I cant boot into either at all. It has been really frustrating to talk to tech support because they don't want to help at all. I took a ticket out with them yesterday and they won't get back to me probably until Tuesday. I can't go all weekend without my computer.

Please help me. I installed Suse alongside windows xp home. Is there a simple fix or will I need to reformat and reinstall everything. I really don't want to do that.

Linux seems cool but it really is frustrating and I almost wish I never bought it because of the terrible customer support I have gotten.

Please Help!!! I want my computer back. I am very new at all of this so I don't really understand the ultra tech talk. If someone can give me a run down and step by step of what to do I would be really really GREATFULL!!!

Well, we do want to help, but will need some more info about your setup:

How many drives and how big?
If you put in the SUSE CD, will it boot?

GRUB is installed in the first sector of your drive called the MBR, and it looks to the root partition in order to find a file called either grub.conf or menu.lst which sets up the boot menu.

I beleive it cannot find said file.

Here is where I will need to know your partitioning scheme to help you further.

I am also reminded of a Linus Torvald quote: "If you use linux, you must be patient. If you use you must be even more patient"

Hi mack63,

well, there must have gone something terribly wrong with your Linux installation (grub should at least give you a menu of the OSes installed). I am not the wizard to clear this, but can give you a hint to get rid of grub and maybe revive your Linux.

What I have done to "remove" a defective attempt of installing Linux was, to boot the system from FreeDOS (CD image also available!), and then I issued the comand

fdisk /mbr

That's it! The whole Linux partition was unreachable (unless I would have taken a linux boot disk, but wanted to dump that anyway, so what), but the Windows previously instaled came up again. The fdisk /mbr command writes a new DOS Master Boot Record, and so the boot sequence started again on C: as any good old DOS did.

HTH,

Peter

Ah, to complete my story: next day I set up a proper debian on this laptop. I am a Linux addict!

I am running two drives a 120GB master drive and a 80 GB slave.

Not sure how to check the partitioning.

Yes if I put the CD in it will boot from there but I cant get back to XP.

you can also use the xp-cd to boot ane do a 'fixmbr' in the command-prompt.

egag

maybe this will help you help me better.

This is my Siga.txt file. Not sure what it will tell you but maybe it will tell you something.

http://mack9.brinkster.net/mack9/siga.htm

Win XP wont boot from the CD it gets to the section were it looks at my hardware configurations and locks up. Cant get to DOS because I am assuming I need to get to that through the XP CD. Cant get to the Command line in XP either.

My partitioning is as follows:

51.7 GB for windows on drive C

1023.7MB Linux Swap
59.0 GB Linux Native




Please Help. I feel like a dunce.

well...you gotto boot one way or the other.....as the xp-cd hangs
when checking hardware ( i think you wrote that ), then try booting from the Suse-cd ( don't know what options are there ?) , and maybe install
either lilo or grub (again )

egag

edit: and if you really paid for those cd's, i think leaving you in the cold
is a shame . ( Suse: just a couple of suckers )

Thanks everyone for the help,

Egag,

I just booted from my Suse CD and went to the install option. I am attempting to delete the Linux partitions and reinstall Suse. Hope that works.

The suse CD gives me the options to install, rescue install, and a few others i dont remember off hand.

I have tried a rescue before but that didnt work.

I also tryed an update install but that also didnt work.

I am hoping this works.

oke....i'm logging off. ( back tomorrow..)
good luck.

egag

Tryed deleting partitions and reinstalling. Still locked up on Grub_ no luck. Dont really know what to do.

I am now attempting to delet partitions on C drive and install Linux on D.

Does anyone know if Linux and XP are running side by side on a single drive that was originally formatted for NTFS do I need to partition Linux on NTFS as well.

DO NOT PUT LINUX ON NTFS.
BAD!!!!!!

SUSE likes Reiser FS and I say give it to it (or ext2 or 3 .. whatever).

Disks are divided into partitions so that multiple OSs can be put on (in fact it is there to keep some data seprate from others, but I digress)

The first thing we need to do is get you into some environment to actually modify things.

This is where the SUSE disk comes in, there is a rescue mode you can get into:

read this

I am pretty sure the default for SUSE is to have just one partition (swap aside), but either way once you have mounted your hardrive open up your fstab in some text editor

or
or
This will tell your partitioning scheme
I need to know what device /dev/something is your windows partition and which is your linux boot partition (or just your linux partition, if don't have a seperate boot)

The goal is to have grub boot off of your suse partition

The next thing I need you to do is to make sure that there exists a file in /mnt/boot called menu.lst or grub.conf ... note this night be in a grub subdirectory. Don't worry about the syntax yet, if that isn't right, we'll see the screen and not get into linux, but the windows line should be very standard

title=Windows Whatever
root {location of windows partition, see below for naming}
makeactive
chainloader +1

The final thing we are going make sure grub looks to the right drive for the conf file, all drives are index by two numbers the first is which drive and the second is which partition on the drive.

You said you have you partitions so in fstab you will see drives like /dev/hda1 or /dev/sdc2

The first two letters will be hd if IDE or sd if SCSI
The third letter indicates the drive's relative position - all I want to know is which one comes first
The third is the partition number

Grub starts counting at zero so for example if you had two drives hda and hdd, hda would be drive 0 (the first one) and hdd would be hd1 (the second)

if you linux partition is is /dev/hda3 (which I imagine it is)
grub sees that as (hd0,2)

so now we type grub and get into it's little command prompt

now type

root {where ever your linux partition is} ---- example : root (hd0,2)

press enter and now

setup {which ever drive you boot off of} ------------ example (hd0) This installs grub into the Master boot record

then quit

now restart, hopefully you will see a GRUB screen and have a couple of nice options

[edit] this isn't an exact algorithm to run, it is a guideline, if you need help, post and I'll help. [/edit]

Hi Newbie here, I have been dealing with this same GRUB_ problem for couple of days now. Got a brand new Toshiba laptop with 100 GB, P 4. I installed Redhat Linux on an existing XP home edition. During the installation process, I could not create a new partition (it says something about not able to create new partition), then I chose option to Remove all Partitions. (I know this would wipe out my data, and it did). I eventually got my Linux boot up OK. I then retored my PC to original specs hopefully I could run my XP, but when it booted up after restored, it came up with a GRUB_ with a black screen and hung up. I 've been trying to rescue, restore, but no luck. I am still stuck with that GRUB_
1/ Any help to get pass this GRUB_ thing to go back to my Xp
2/ to create a new partition for Linux so I can install dual OS
Would be appreciated. Thanks

hi there,

i think you'd better start a new thread since your prob is different .

but as i understand correct:

-you have a laptop with a blank 100GB hraddisk.
-you want XP and redhat installed both.

correct ?

ifso:
-first reinstall xp (making 2 partitions) on a ntfs partition of say 15-20 GB.
-make a vfat ( this is #2 ) partition 10-20 Gb ( can be used by xp and RH for data sharing )

-install RH . this needs at least 2 partitions( better 3): 1 small swap ( 512 MB ) and a partition to install .( maybe also 10-20 GB).
- and make an extra partition for the /home dir ( rest ??? )
( btw.: all partition-sizes are just a guess by me. you can devide it any way you want.... )

after install i would use lilo to get a choice at boot between xp/RH.

see how far you get, and start a new thread when you've got any questions.
( you'll get more attention if you do so... )

egag