hi all,

I used to use win, then installed linux and dumped win. but now needed it back as I could not find a deriver for my scanner that goes with linux (so I thougt just have both on our pc).

Well, happend is that since I installed win when ever I want to boot, windows 2000 does. but if I want to boot suse it tries to boot from the wrong disk ???!!! I kind of get into a non-graphic dos-like arean where I can enter commands, but I really do not manage to make it boot from the right disk ?! any idea how to solve that ? I guess win somehow manged to damage suse.

Thank u so much for help ! I really need my data back.

What boot manager do you see? It propably is either grub, lilo or the m$ manager.
What you can so depends on what boot manager your system uses, and what manager you want your system to use.

In case of grub, you could boot with a Live CD (Knoppix, e.g.), mount the systems root partition rw and edit the file "/boot/grub/menu.lst".
At the end is an entry block, each starting with a "title" stanza. In the malfunctional entry block, check the root stanza. Counting starts with zero, here, so (hd0,1) means the partition hda2. ("hd0"->hda, and "1"->partition number 2). Similar: (hd0,0)-> hda1, (hd1,2)->hdb3...
In case of lilo and m$, I cannot write it out of memory... Just leave a post.

If you see the m$ boot loader while preferring grub, you can install grub with "grub-install" in Knoppix. The usage of grub-install is quiet easy, just look at man grub-install.

Greets

it is grub, thank u I will give it a try

Hi! I re-read my last posting and find it little confusing:
The menu.lst file I mentioned is located in the /boot/grub directory relative to your mounted root partition. If you normally boot from hda1, the file to edit within knoppix is named something like /mnt/hda1/boot/grub/menu.lst.

did not work !
I now bought a second disk, installed suse on it and it worked fully but as soon as I swichted it of and back on, I had exactly the same problem as before...............

Hi and sorry for delaying that much.
Sounds confusing. This "dos-like area" you mentioned, is it bash or the grub command line? Means: Does your system boot, but lacks a graphical login? Or does it hang within the grubthing?

sounds like the same problem i was having, i think i solved it by editing grub.conf if my memory serves me right