Hi.

I have a problem which I cannot figure out for the life of me.

I have a dual-boot configuration with Windblows XP Pro on one partition and SuSE Pro 9.3 on the other partition. I've installed GRUB into the MBR of /hda
GRUB works flawlessly when I boot into SuSE, which I do 99.9% of the time.
However, if I do boot into Windblows any reboot after that fails with the systems looping in startup ie, it never seems to get to GRUB.
This of course necessitates a boot from the SuSE installation disk and a reinstallation of GRUB.
Thus, everytime I boot into Windblows it seems to blow away GRUB for some ungodly reason.
Any ideas?

Richard

wait a sec: correct me if I am wrong, but- when you reboot you can't get to grub, or after an end of windows session grub is gone?

when windows reboots, I think it doesn't go all the way back to the computer starting up. What happens if you power down?

titanium_geek

If I reboot or power down Windows then grub is no longer available and the system loops between the startup screen and a blank screen ie, GRUB is nowhere to be found.
If I reboot or power down from SuSE, no problems at all.

Windows is doing something either to GRUB or the MBR and I can't figure out what, or why.

where is windows installed? what happens if you put grub on a floppy? what are you trying to do with windows?

titanium_geek

My partitions look similar to:

/dev/hda1 /
/dev/hda2 /windblows/C
/dev/hda3 /swap

I haven't tried grub on a floppy but I suppose I could.

I have to leave Windoze on the machine because it's my work system. I rarely venture into Windows but I can't remove it without being removed from my job! (It's their system, not mine.)

Thanks.

ahh... windows might try and write to the MBR - but it all depends on what you are doing. Service packs etc will make windows overwrite the mbr. I suggest grub on a floppy- it might help.

titanium_geek

Thanks for theinfo Titanium_geek. Could you point me to a good "tutorial" on how to setup grub on a floppy: I'm kind of a newbie to Linux.
Thanks again.

You can also start GRUB from the NT-loader. Just install GRUB into the /boot partition and add a stanza to the boot.ini pointing to that.

<Edit> Um, no, put GRUB not in /boot but in your root ("/") -- since you have no /boot partition.

sure: here's a tutorial.
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...0boot%20floppy
the whole site is an excellent grub manual, but that link points specifically to installing on a floppy.

tianium_geek

Thanks again Titanium. I'll study the GRUB info.