Newbie to Linux and Windows
 

Hi all, im a new user to both Windows and Linux, Big Mac guy.

Heres my problem, im trying to get SuSE 9.3 and Windows XP pro to load. The GRUB loads and sees windows but when i boat to it it gives me an error, i reinstalled WInXP and now the Grub will not even load. When I was goin thru the XP intall I noticed that i had 5 partitions and only one was for WinXP. Should i just reinstall SuSE and then reinstall WinXP or should Just erase my HD(40GB) and start new.

WinXP will overwrite the MBR (Master Boot Record) everytime you install XP. Since grub resides in MBR, you should first install XP and then install SuSE. This way it would be much easier (read less painful) to get the system running. Only one of your partition was for XP but others may be created by SuSE depending on your partitioning scheme while installing SuSE.

If you have SuSE rescue cd, you can run it and log into SuSE after which you can reinstall grub.

Tux,

Thanks for the info. Should i just use the recomended Partioning Scheme for SuSE or should i use a custom one?

I would suggest you atleast make your /home partition separate. That way it would be lot easier to save your personal data in case you need to upgrade or reinstall.

I don't remember what the default partitioning scheme SuSE has but the installer is quite intuitive and you should be able to create a separate /home partition.

Tux,

If all you have on your system is windows and suse, just use suse's partitioning scheme. One thing that is helpful is to create a fat32 partition somewhere on your hd. This will allow you to share files between XP and linux. Just make it 5-10 gig or so. This is just handy since both can read and write to it.

When you're done, you're going to have several partitions:

• The Windows-NT partition.
• The boot-partition, containing the grub boot-loader and the associated files.
• The partition containing Linux.
• Probably, a Linux swap partition.

As things stand now, the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the disk drive invokes the Windows NT loader. One change that you're going to make is to rewrite the MBR to point to Grub. And then, you're going to create an entry in the Grub menu that allows you to select Windows-NT as the OS to load. (Grub will actually load the Windows-NT loader, just as the MBR would have done, and transfer control to it.)

Anytime you "reinstall" Windows .. which is often :rolleyes: .. it's going to rewrite the MBR. What you have to do, when that happens, is to just boot a liveCD, mount the boot-partition, and rerun the grub command sequence to rewrite the MBR as mentioned in info grub. And what that will do is put things "back to normal."

well i had many problems with SuSE, i opted for UBUTU just to become more experienced with Linux and Windows