Hello,

First timer here. I've recenlty loaded SuSE 9.1 and every since I can't boot XP. Unlike other people that have had this problem I do not get an ntfs error or anything like that. If I choose Windows from the GRUB(?) screen I am then taken to a screen that gives me an option of booting from the last good image (or something along those lines) or booting into Safe mode, safe mode with command line etc. When I choose to boot windows normally the Windows logo comes up for a couple of seconds and then the PC starts booting again with the initial BIOS load.

I have tried the link above as it describes my situation perfect but it doesn't work. When I hit F6 to update driver and enter fixpart=1 everything is fine but when it asks for the floppy or CD (I tried them both) it fails to see the drivers. In fact it fails to see the floppy at all but can't find the drivers when using the CD. When linux is up I can view the files on the floppy/cd fine.

Any suggestions?? Now I am thinking I would like to remove the partition and try installing it again but I don't know how to do this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Leon

I've been reading your tale of woe with a certain amount of sympathy. I decided to go the dualboot route with Fedora 2. After an apparent successful install, it wouldn't load up, so I zapped it off the drive using my Maxtor setup utility and found myself locked out of Windows. I had to reload Fedora, this time without Grub (aptly named, in my opinion) and zapped Fedora in Disk Maintenace from inside XP, and then rebuilding the master boot record.

Determined to get Linux on the machine, I loaded up Mandrake 10. It wouldn't load, either, and, not having learned my lesson with Fedora, I repeated the experience I had with Fedora. I then changed my graphics card, thinking it was my most likely problem and set out to reload M. After explicitly ordering it to install into the Fat32 partition set aside for it, it installed itself over my XP installation.

So, no big deal. I did a total hd wipe, excluding my backup partition, did a minimal reinstall of XP, loaded my backup into it and was back where I started from. More or less. A few hours later, that is.

I then laid my hands on RedHat 9, loaded it without the bootloader, and it ran fine. The difference being, instead of setting up a partition for it, I left free space and loaded it there.

It's probable that using the floppy takes a few more seconds than the bootloader, but should I decide to lose RedHat, I can simply format its partitions and I'm home free.

Now, if I could only figure out how to load up the icon in my Foxfire folder.

And I will never, and I repeat never, use a bootloader. They're vicious animals which refuse to be tamed.

This sounds a lot like the Mandrake 10 and Fedora Core 2 problem. I don't know what Suse is using for partitioning, but that is key to the problem.

In essence it is the combination of having the 2.6 kernel, using parted and having a large drive. The 2.6 kernel reports the physical geometry rather than the logical. parted uses what the kernel reports and changes the partition table CHS. The BIOS adapts to it. Windows is relying on the geometry that was originally used when it was installed and so it doesn't find its kernel. It uses int13 function 2 (CHS based) instead of int13 function 0x42. GRUB and LILO use function 0x42 and only use function 2 when the other fails.

You can read the gory details in bug reports for each.

Mandrake bug report opened: 2004.02.17
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7959

Fedora bug report opened: *2004-02-17 *
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=115980

Quote from Mandrake bugzilla giving what seems the best summary to me:
Date: /2004-03-18 /
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7959#c21

Anyone know if Suse is using parted to do the partitioning? In Mandrake there is diskdrake which is a front-end for parted and in Fedora it is disk druid.

Here's a slight variation on the same problem. I have yet to proceed w/ my linux install (suse 9.1) for a dual system. I've done them before using both the partition/ bootmagic method as well as with the boot loaders provided with linux. Anyway, i'd like to try it again but under slightly different circumstances. This is what I have:

Desktop pc w/ 2 Harddrives:

1 Master =
40 GB containing winXP OS plus a couple other logical partitions for my cd images and backups.

1 Slave =
4 GB Contains a linux partition magic formatted EXT2 partition along with a Swap partiton

I guess my question is should I play it safe and use bootmagic or risk letting the linux bootloaders figure out my layout....I'm worried that since the Linux bootloader will be on the slave hard drive that it wont be able to detect and jump in to the master hard drive in order to find my windows OS. I remember trying it last time on another computer (which only had one harddrive) and it had trouble finding windows then as well. Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated.....

I read the paper regarding the suse bootloader issue/solution and will try that but before i put all my eggs in that basket, has anyone attempted that solution and how did it turn out for you?

ntldr may be from over clocking if your processor it above its limit it will do this. Ive had it happen when i had my 1.7 celeron i could go to 120 fsb but at 121 it would give me the error. You can also fix this by repairing the xp install. Nothing will get deleted and it will run like new.

Is this the one you read?

http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...booting91.html

I had wondered about SUSE when I posted the earlier thing on Mandrake and Fedora Core 2. YAST indeed uses parted as a front-end and can have the same problem. They give details on avoiding it on the above page. Also they tell you how to fix it.

The BIOS is a key part too. A friend installed SUSE 9.1 on 3 computers with large drives and did not have this happen once. I think the BIOS settings are an important part. If the geometry is not found using the Auto mode in the BIOS, then it seems that things will be fine. I believe that document above speaks about that. they also point to a patch for parted.

Anita

Thank you for that booting91 SuSE portal link, been searching for quite a while to find something (in reasonably understandable language for an intermediate Linux user such as myself) that properly explains what is going on there.

Dual-booting WinXP Pro and SuSE 9.1 on PIII laptop w/20GB HDD just fine, no problem. The Athlon XP desktop w/80GB HDD, however, has been the bane of my existence. In each case, I used WinXP to set up NTFS partition for Windows and programs, FAT32 for shared data (tried as both primary and logical partition, had more problems as logical), and then let SuSE set up its own / and swap. Often (but not always) lets me install both OSes successfully, then after SuSE setup is done I can usually still boot back to WinXP. BUT, after running a while in either OS, it starts behaving erratically. Examples.... Windows: hitting 'y' key makes 'z', or display turns wrong colors and system locks. SuSE: locks up during eth0 (or other) init, Yast opens but closes immediately before you can use it. Problems different every time. Checked BIOS and it was using CHS when set to Auto. Hard-set it to LBA, didn't seem to help much. Partition Magic 7 still reports Error 110, bad partition table. Very frustrating, as you can imagine, to go through the entire install for 2 OSes before seeing if a new setting worked! Will try the solutions in the article and let ya know if it works.

Forgot to mention: I even used the Maxtor util to write all 0's in hopes of clearing any troublemaker MBR or partition table issues from before. No dice.

Hey all, I've used this approach many times , with many different boards,hardware configurations with no issues whatsoever.....
let's say u wanna dual boot a ..umm 20GB HD for example,
1.Wipe it clean, no partitions whatsoever...
2.Install WInXP FIRST.
2. During XP install, create one (1) 10 GB partition in NTFS or FAT32(whatever),leave the other half unformatted, just leave it raw!
3.Verify that your XP install went ok,and shutdown.
4.Boot up from your SuSE disk.
5.SuSE should pick up the raw HD space and decide to use it for swap and / without a hitch
5.During SuSE's installation config/verify screen, verify that GRUB leaves the MBR untouched(which it should by default), it will also detect any Windohs partitions and mount them as /windows/c, I took the opportunity to change GRUB's default 8 second OS choice time to 60 secs to allow more breathing/deciding time.
6.And that should do it, during GRUB's boot up it wil give u the all too familiar Linux,Windows,Floppy,Failsafe screen.
7.Under No Circumstance would I recomend using a third party boot manager, I.E. BootMagic, etc. even using Partition magic or the like to resize partitions can be hazardous and end up giving you more frustration than it's worth.
It's been simple for maybe I'm just lucky.

Always have a backup drive!!

Oh yeah, I realy didn't read the whole "middle" part of this thread, so if I'm being redundant here I apologize, just wanted to add my two cents worth.......which I expect change from.