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Old 11-15-2005, 09:15 PM   #1
maparus
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Registered: Nov 2005
Location: New Albany, Indiana USA
Distribution: Debian Etch
Posts: 18

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Suse 9.1 dual boot problem


While trying to install Suse and winXP. At the end of the installation I can't start windows. I know this has been asked before and I have found the driver update to fix it but I need a little help in translating the instructions.



Solution
One quick solution is to activate the LBA or large access mode under which the hard disk was previously addressed for the hard disks in the computer's BIOS. It is important that the hard disk values not be set to "AUTO".


( I didn't see any place in my Bio so i'll move on)


If this does not help (or if your BIOS does not offer this option), you can repair the partition table with a driver update. To do this, proceed as follows: On our FTP server, find two images at ********************** one for creating a floppy disk and one for creating a CD.

( want to do a floppy disk)



Floppy Disk
To install the driver update from floppy disk, proceed as follows:

* Download the file parted.img.gz and save it to a directory of your choice, for example, in /tmp.

( I had to do a windows xp recovery so Suse 9.1
is no longer on my hard drive. I downloaded
the patch to my desktop and copied it to a floppy
that didn't work the instalation program couldn't
find the driver patch)




* Insert a floppy disk and use the following command to write the image to the medium:

gunzip -c parted.img.gz >/dev/fd0


( this is where I am lost. What does this mean?
It doesn't look like a command I would use
in a Windows and Suse is not installed. Suse doesn't
reconize my modem so I can't go on line there)



Caution: The previous content of the floppy disk will be lost.
* Insert the installation CD/DVD (important: if you use an AMD-64 system, insert the 32-bit side of the DVD). Boot the first installation CD or DVD up to the point where you can choose one of the different installation variants.
* Press F6. A message asking you to keep the driver update ready will be displayed.
* Use the arrow key to select the menu item "Installation".
* Enter the boot parameter "fixpart=1"

( instructions say I skip the
fixpart=1 part if Suse is not
yet installed)


and press ENTER.
* When the message "Please choose the Driver Update medium" is displayed, insert the driver update disk you created and press "OK".
* In the following menu, select "floppy" and confirm with "OK".

( this is as far as I got last time
couldn't find a driver on the floppy)



* After completing the driver update, press "Back".
* The following dialog for repairing the partition table displays your hard disk (usually /dev/hda) and the status of the partition table (broken). Select the hard disk and click "OK" to repair the partition table.
* After repairing the partition table, exit the menu with "Back". Press the key combination CTRL-ALT-DEL to reboot the computer and remove all media from the drives.

Now you should be able to boot both Windows and Linux.



Thank you for any help Maparus
 
Old 11-16-2005, 09:26 AM   #2
bigjohn
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Registered: Jun 2002
Location: UK .
Distribution: *buntu (usually Kubuntu)
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Given at the time of posting theres been 28 views and no reply, maybe you should explain a little more.

Is this a desktop or laptop?

what kind of hdd (EIDE, ATA, SATA, etc etc)?

Because if your setup is pretty standard, you should either just get XP set up and running, then make the partitions for the SuSE or just try to boot the SuSE - I don't know if it will handle re-partitioning or not, I believe that Mandriva will do that.

Lots of people prefer to do the partitioning seperately from the install - though that often ends up with more questions than answers.

Install of SuSE should be reasonably straight forward - unless you're trying to install a very old version (10.0 is current, though 9.3 and 9.2 should install without having to go through the hoops of driver upgrades etc - couldn't say about 9.1 it may be better if you obtained one of the later versions).

So perhaps you could elaborate a little - because your opening post does seem rather muddled.

regards

John

Last edited by bigjohn; 11-16-2005 at 09:28 AM.
 
Old 11-16-2005, 09:52 AM   #3
maparus
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Registered: Nov 2005
Location: New Albany, Indiana USA
Distribution: Debian Etch
Posts: 18

Original Poster
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Quote:
Originally posted by bigjohn
Given at the time of posting theres been 28 views and no reply, maybe you should explain a little more.

Is this a desktop or laptop?

what kind of hdd (EIDE, ATA, SATA, etc etc)?

Because if your setup is pretty standard, you should either just get XP set up and running, then make the partitions for the SuSE or just try to boot the SuSE - I don't know if it will handle re-partitioning or not, I believe that Mandriva will do that.

Lots of people prefer to do the partitioning seperately from the install - though that often ends up with more questions than answers.

Install of SuSE should be reasonably straight forward - unless you're trying to install a very old version (10.0 is current, though 9.3 and 9.2 should install without having to go through the hoops of driver upgrades etc - couldn't say about 9.1 it may be better if you obtained one of the later versions).

So perhaps you could elaborate a little - because your opening post does seem rather muddled.

regards

John

Thank you for the responce. To answer your questions my computer is a desktop and hdd is ata. The enclosed driver patch is typed as it was issued by Suse support. If it seems muddled
by an experenced user like you. You should see it through the eyes of a 54yr old newbee. I may just have to go to Suse 10.0. Suse says this problem exists in almost all destros using 2.6 kernel

thanks again maparus
 
Old 11-16-2005, 10:13 AM   #4
gd2shoe
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Registered: Jun 2004
Location: Northern CA
Distribution: Debian
Posts: 835

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Quote:
gunzip -c parted.img.gz >/dev/fd0


( this is where I am lost. What does this mean?
It doesn't look like a command I would use
in a Windows and Suse is not installed. Suse doesn't
reconize my modem so I can't go on line there)
I don't know about the rest of your problem, but I do understand this part. A ".gz" file is a compressed file, much like a ".zip" file. You will need to find a tool to uncompress it. I believe that winrar is capable. There is also a program here that should work: ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/suse/i3...osutils/untgz/

(Note that this isn't a zipped archive of files like a zip file is, that would be a ".tar.gz" . This is a single file that has been compressed. I'm not sure how various programs will deal with this. You may need to try several to get it to open.)

Inside that "parted.img.gz" file that you downloaded, there should be a single file, probably called "parted.img". From here you will need rawwritewin to get it onto a floppy. One place to get the program: ftp://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/suse/i3...s/rawwritewin/

I hope this helps.
 
Old 11-16-2005, 10:19 AM   #5
gd2shoe
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Registered: Jun 2004
Location: Northern CA
Distribution: Debian
Posts: 835

Rep: Reputation: 49
Oh, and as a side note.

I have had trouble installing any version of windows on my machine (they would simply not boot, and give me a black screen). It finally cleared up when I reformatted and repartitioned. I'm not sure if the partition table has anything to do with it in your case, but in mine it was a problem totally independent from my linux version (as near as I can tell).
 
Old 11-16-2005, 07:48 PM   #6
bigjohn
Senior Member
 
Registered: Jun 2002
Location: UK .
Distribution: *buntu (usually Kubuntu)
Posts: 2,692
Blog Entries: 9

Rep: Reputation: 45
Quote:
Originally posted by maparus
Thank you for the responce. To answer your questions my computer is a desktop and hdd is ata. The enclosed driver patch is typed as it was issued by Suse support. If it seems muddled
by an experenced user like you. You should see it through the eyes of a 54yr old newbee. I may just have to go to Suse 10.0. Suse says this problem exists in almost all destros using 2.6 kernel
thanks again maparus
No no my friend, time served rather than experienced. Expert ??? Not all the time my a**e points downwards (plus my post count just means that I've spent 3+ years or so asking lots of rubbish (IMO) questions). I suspect like a few others who read your initial post, it all seemed rather dis-jointed. I certainly wasn't sure "what was what".

I notice that gd2shoe has suggested possible ideas. The only time I've had problems with a partition table was when I'd been a little too smart and not paid attention to what I was doing - trying to make extra partitions to put my mp3's and stuff on. I'd made the partition a linux extended one that was formatted as FAT32 (with partition magic 8). Whereas it should have been a windows extended one partitioned as FAT32 - When I found out what I'd done, I just started deleting stuff to try to mend it and screwed the partition table.

It meant a mammoth re-install session (all those windows updates, service packs and the like Ugh!).

From there, I just started from scratch, and sorted the windows first - got that working Ok, but left the space for my linux as unallocated. Then one of the blokes from my LUG explained the finer points of fdisk. That worked and I ended up with 5 partitions. 1 for windows, then 4 for linux so I could have /boot, /swap, / and /home. Not long after I worked out that I new enough to not too have to bother with windows and started over again, but without any windows.

Hence I still think it might be better if you get your windows sorted and running OK, then see if you can install the SuSE - again, I'd still suggest getting the latest version - and yes it can be downloaded and burned under windows (with a burning app) just make sure if you go the download route that you look into "md5sum" checking (theres a free app called md5summer that will do the check) as that will check the integrity of any download (one wrong number/letter and it usually means that you need to d/l again).

Thats about all I can think of at the moment.

regards

John


p.s. Oh and 54yr old newbie, meet 40yr old truck driver ! As I say, expert?? NOT!
 
  


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