Linux does not present a "window"
 

I have linux suse 8.0 installed with windows xp. If I do not intercept at boot time and let linux start (rather than windows)(which still runs well), I get a lot of commands (white on a black panel) and never get a panel that means anything. The latest message is"Kernel panic: VFS:unable to mount root fs on 03:07" Anyone have a clue what is going on? Doug

All that text does mean something ;)

But unfortunately, that last message is a problem - the kernel can't find the filesystem it uses to store the essential parts of your linux system. Have you changed the kernel recently? Do you use grub or lilo?

Are you saying that that's what comes up if you let the bootloader do it's default thing, but if you choose either OS manually it works fine? If so, then the bootloader is probably misconfigured. The default may be set to load a kernel that doesn't actually exist, rather than one of the two actual OS's.

So, as asked above, which bootloader are you using? Also, what menu options do you see when it starts? And what did you do that could have caused this change?