XP/SUSE dual boot

kydung · 11-02-2004, 01:31 AM

Hello everybody,
I am new to this forum. I'd like to know if the problem "Windows XP no longer boots after installation of Suse 9.1" has been fixed for Suse 9.2.
Thank you for your help.

dth1 · 11-02-2004, 04:04 AM

I am not sure of your question here.

You may want to add some extra information to make it more clear.

Praetor Judis · 11-02-2004, 04:33 AM

I haven't run into that issue with at least three dual boot installs of either 9.0 or 9.1. Lucky? I guess so...

abisko00 · 11-02-2004, 04:57 AM

Strange that this question is asked so often. One must think that the SuSE/Novell people are really stupid to include a known (and fixed) bug into their new version again. But maybe you are right to as this question, so many stupid things happen...so here's my answer: I don't know, but I think it's most probable that it has been fixed.

This booting problem was caused by the tool parted, that wrote a defect partition table after NTFS resize. Those who did not need to resize their Windows partitions (or used a 3rd party tools) where not affected. SuSE offered a fixed version of parted to repair the partition table (see: http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...booting91.html )

kydung · 11-04-2004, 01:35 AM

From what I gather that bug is mainly caused by Parted and would not exist if I resized the NTFS partition with a third party tool before installing Suse.

barrys · 11-04-2004, 01:48 AM

No the bug exists and you loose all the windows and mandrake if you have that to.

I went out and bought the 9.1 professional thinking they wouldn't release a distro that did not dual boot, alas they have so back to the comfort and feel of mandrake and 10.1 is so much better than 10.

I just prefer a distro that puts everything in and not have to ad. I still have not been able to get the secure htttps working with it certificate or not.

Wish they would fix these problems and it would be a great winner. I suggest someone at SuSE tries Mandrake and see what they are up against the addition of the Mandrake ease of use and especially the boot loader would be great.

Now one should have to go and use a disc partioner from another source to get a distro working and especially having to reload and use Mandrake to clean up the disc after SuSE has been around.

abisko00 · 11-04-2004, 02:22 AM

Hi barrys!

I think your are picking a little too much on SuSE, especially as it was not the question if the bug exists or not. We all know it is there, we all know about the fix (that's why no one needs to lose a XP partition). BTW: not only SuSE was affected, a couple of other distros (including Mandrake) used this buggy parted version, too.

Even if I repeat myself too often: why the hell should this bug be included in 9.2 again?

kydung: Not mainly caused by parted, exclusively

And you are right: no problems with 3rd party tools and already existing free space.

Mad Malc · 11-04-2004, 03:21 PM

Hi All
It's not just a problem with parted, on another forum a guy dual installed XP and SUSE using partition magic and still lost XP.
The reason, he put SUSE in partitions before XP.
All Windows Oses hog the first primary partition as pagefile (linux swap), so if you put anything other than a windows compatible file structure on Hda1 (windows C: ) windows refuses to work.
Mad Malc

abisko00 · 11-05-2004, 02:29 AM

MadMalc:

You're right, but actually that's a 'bug' in Windows, not SuSE and thus applies to all Windows dual boot systems.

toddncl · 11-05-2004, 03:29 AM

yup, its been fixed. formatted and installed 9.2 lastnight, winxp still boots. I did have the problem with 9.1 but its gone.

kydung · 11-05-2004, 03:09 PM

Finally I will wait for 9.2 so to avoid that bug. I shall shrink my XP partition with Acronis Partition Expert ,leave unallocated free space and let Yast create linux partitions. Is that right?
Thanks everybody.

toddncl · 11-06-2004, 08:23 AM

yep, thats the easiest way to do it. suse will sort the free space into the necessary partitions for you and set mount points for the other partions.

electronique · 11-15-2004, 11:12 PM

barrys... what can I say? you're dumb. Please don't post ads for Mandrake in a SuSE forum when someone is asking a legitimate question about SuSE, not weather or not they should use Mandrake... not trying to flame anyone but wow...

Anyways on to the question... I never ran into this issue and have been dual-booting XP/SuSE since SuSE 8.2, but then again I never resized my partitions with the SuSE Installer, if I needed to do that I did it with Symantec's Partitionmagic 8, and I would assume that the good people at SuSE would have fixed a known bug as opposed to acknowledging it and leaving it be.

so if you phear the bug use 3rd party software to resize partitions prior to installing SuSE... but I'm 99.99% sure that known bugs will be taken care of