Well my problems are several. First off I should give some advice to others who may stumble upon the problem I already solved, that being that after my SuSE install everything would boot up all well and nice then when the GUI went to load my monitor would turn off. The problem was that SuSE incorrectly set the resolution for my LCD cuasing it to go out of range and not show up.... took me a bit to figure out exactly what happend but thats that. Now to my real problem. The only way I can get SuSE to boot is with the install cd in the drive. If I boot regularily without the install disk all I get is the text "GRUB" printed and nothing happens. But if I have the install cd in (I did a network install via ftp btw) and select boot from HD then select my SuSE install, everything boots fine. But if I try to go to boot windows xp the same way it tells me that NTLDR is missing and I have to ctr alt del. I am using a single 120gig SATA drive and I had SuSE 9.0 and windows XP coexisting peacefully before the upgrade. When I installed 10.0 I did not alter my partitions at all, I simply had 9.0 whiped and replaced with 10. Any suggestions as to how to fix either of these problems would be greatly appreciated.

I guess we can help you best if you post your bootloader configuration:

/boot/grub/menu.lst
/boot/grub/device.map
/etc/grub.conf
fdisk -l

This should help to figure out what's wrong.

abisko00 hope you don't mind my aussie cent worth...
suse cd to chainload to XP is not looking good if it fails to find ntldr
I am guessing 19syzerman19 may have accidently put grub into his XP partition and somehow overwritten ntldr.exe or ntldr.com

Can you advise if you have tried the XP rescue mode on the MS and or can you get into MS pls......on top of abisko00 questions thanks

Thanks, I sometimes forget that Windows might be something worth saving

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hde
(hd1) /dev/hda



###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd1,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda4 vga=0x317 selinux=0 resume=/dev/hda3 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
chainloader (hd1,0)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Floppy
chainloader (fd0)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd1,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda4 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume selinux=0 nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
initrd /boot/initrd

setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd1,3) (hd1,3)
setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd0) (hd1,3)
quit


There is my boot loader config, and my windows partition is in tact and is fully accessable from within SuSE. Also the install didn't alter my partitions at all, it just erased the ones used for SuSE 9 and then put 10 on them.

No ideas as to why SuSE would boot through the cd but not straight from grub on the HD or on how to bring windoz back to life????

anyone??

I am guessing you really have MS on that drive so its hd number is 0? see my troublshooter or tutorial but if I am right ms
title MS
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

if that fails tell us what each drive is to partiton like
bios boots to hd0.....which is software raided with MS part 1 is C part 2 is data part 5 is my dox etc

2) can you be more explicit as to why you reported a prob with ntldr and now you are ok pls
spell it out to us...I am not offended, I am an aussie we breedum tougher that texans

May I intervene this here (aus9, hope you don't mind)
I think the ntdlr problem still exists and 19syzerman19 just refers to the accessibility of the partition as a linux mount.

19syzerman19: I remember that Windows does only load it it believes it's located on the first drive on the controller. To boot Windows from hd1, you may have to use the map-trick:
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/0...grub_win1.html

But that doesn't solve the SUSE bootloader problem. What is this drive hde? You didn't mention it before and it seems the bootloader is installed here. I have a similar configuration (single 120GB S-ATA drive) and on my system grub.conf looks like this:
Don't ask me why the command is run twice (maybe aus9 knows). This grub manual may be helpful to solve your problem: http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/0..._overview.html

You are correct. My windows partition is accessable as a mount through SuSE but I am unable to boot to it because of the NTLDR error. My partitions are as follows:
hda1 NTFS /windows/C
hda2 Extended
hda3 Linux swap
hda4 Linux native
hda5 Fat32

then I have a second 8gig hard drive which I simply use to back up some data and it is a single NTFS partition under hde, hde1 extended, hde5 NTFS /windows/E. I hope this is what you were looking for, if not let me know and I will find what you are asking for. Thanks a lot for your time and patience so far!

i will jump in again as I agree the hde is the issue.

counting primary then master for each controller should give you this
hda primary
hdb slave
hdc primary 2
hdd slave 2
hde primary 3

now my mobo has 4 ide controllers so we need to know if you agree you have at least 3 otherwise we are looking at a bad map command and that brings me to that setup "crap" I did not pay any attention to earlier.

A number of linux distros make up a example grub menu.lst and normally may include some commands for installing grub again etc.
I am now thinking that maybe on install suse got confused with bios boot order of hd0 (=hde) and as you guessed put grub on mbr for hde.

uhh, you think it should have? as your device map says grub is to expect hde first then hda.

Which brings me to another question why would you have bios booting to hde b4 hda unless your small drive was once MS loaded and then you bought a bigger drive.

so hde is still the issue but wrong assumption by me.........I will be blunter.

If you want to have a better system, swap the ide drives so that the bios detects your big drive first....and hopefully its a faster one as well
after the swap......the mbr for hda is likely to have no bootloader installed.
then use MS rescue mode off your ms cd to put ntldr onto this virgin mbr and boot to test that you can get to C drive and the other drive will be renumbered but should be D drive?

NOW YOU MAY BE reluctant to do this so wait for someone kind and wise like abisko00 to double check my logic.
now you do not need to touch the jumpers just on the mobo swap the cables, 1 minutes work

iff then using a knoppix or kanotix cd use my tuts way of over writing that mbr with grub and then edit the menu.lst file

and change those file root bits from hd1 to hd0
title SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd0,3)

ditto for suse failsafe but your suse windows command was crap it must now be like this

title MS
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

then cull that junk for the setup lines and delete the floppy stuff.......floppy stuff is not for beginners but us old timers who can remember when floppies were an operating system......heh heh

thanks for your advice aus9, I will have to read it over a couple more times to make sure I understand it all. Just for the record, my motherboard does not have a SATA controller built in, I am running a PCI SATA raid controller with a single 120gig drive hooked up to it. My little 8gig drive is hooked up as the primary IDE drive on the motherboard. This is the same setup I had when I installed SuSE 9.0 and all worked out ok, I just figured when I installed over it with 10 it would just rewrite what was written before. So what I get from what you are saying is that SuSE installed grub to the mbr on my 8gig IDE drive rather than to the mbr on my SATA drive, and my bios always said to boot from HD0 first, which was the 8gig but because there was never anything there it continued looking and then booted from the SATA drive. But now with the mbr on the 8gig written by SuSE it is just booting from there, and somehow that won't work for windows? Hopefully I got that right, but I still don't get how this effects SuSE only booting with the install cd in the drive. Thanks again for your patience

This sounds like a tricky thing!

I agree on aus9's idea to swap the order of drive recognition. Since the is only one drive on the IDE controller, this may be just a BIOS setting (first S-ATA, then IDE). But beeing a PCI card, the S-ATA controller may not be configurable through the BIOS. What can we do then?

The boot option 'ide=reverse' could be used to change the detection behaviour of the kernel. However, the outcome may be a little unpredictable (since the default behaviour is strange already). I am just guessing here: try to boot from CD and add 'ide=reverse' as additional paramter to the kernel line. Then, re-write the bootloader to the drive that is now detected as hd0. You may need to change /etc/fstab in case hda became hd0. So cross-check before you reboot!

I'd guess the windows problem will be solved subsequently...

Another idea:

Based on the assumption that the boot failure is caused by grub not detecting your PCI S-ATA controller, you could try to create a small (~50MB) /boot partition on the IDE drive. The /boot partition will contain the kernel, initial ramdisk and stage2 of your bootloader. The main system however will remain on the big drive. Unfortunately this will cause some re-partitioning and a new SUSE installation (or some tricky adjustments).

well I did not want to be completely bossy and tell him how to partition but oh what the heck....
that small drive has an extended partition and I don't recall MS needing that in the past but I may be wrong.

so if you look at re-parting the 8G consider this
backup all data of that to cdr or dvds
repart to allow a /boot as per abisko00 suggestion (but as a primary partition) and as you are allowed 4 make your fat32 MS another primary partition so you can easily share data between the 2.

There are other posts on file sharing and that ntfs can now only just now be written onto by linux but its still safer to use fat32. But MS now say you should not use fat as its too insecure. But you can guess I have given up talking people into linux only---as its a free world.

I don't use suse but I guess there is an issue for it and the kernel 2.6 in seeing a non-raided sata drive?
My drive is also non-raided as I can only afford one, boo hoo, but Mdk sees it as sda
(waffle and it was helped that way as I deliberately formatted it that way)

BTW if you want to use a kanotix or knoppix cd to repart that 8G you have the option to say either sdX or hdX but as you are new it may be too much info for your brain.

(2) can you name the pci card in case others can learn from this issue?
Mdk has a hardware compat list as does Linuxquestions so the info could really help others (after we have helped you as much as we can)