Re: [LUG] SUSE 10.1 Rocks but Windows gone

On Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:26:03 +0100, Paul Weaver wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 24, 2006 at 09:36:31PM +0100, "Philip Radford" wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I have just installed SUSE 10.1 OSS in order to dual boot with
>> Windows XP.
>>
> A good first step
>
>> XP is on the first partition and SUSE installed onto free space
>> which I made available on the same drive.
>>
>> All went well or so I thought until I discovered that the Windows
>> entry on the SUSE (GRUB) boot menu does not load Windows. It just
>> sits there with the message "chainloader hd(0,0)+1" and does not
>> go any further.
>>
>
> I haven't dual-booted with windows since 2000 came out, and never
> with grub, but that looks like it should work. Are there any other
> error messages before the chainloader line (file errors etc?)
>
>> I love SUSE 10.1 and everything works so I do not want to remove
>> it.
>>
> Excelent
>
>> Therefore I have installed GRUB to a floppy disk so that I can
>> boot SUSE in the future and tried to remove GRUB from the MBR in
>> order to restore the windows boot process.
>>
>
> Floppy, whats a floppy?
>
>> I tried to remove GRUB by booting from the XP CD, entering
>> recovery console and performing the classic FIXMBR and FIXBOOT.
>> But whatever I do GRUB will not remove itself from the MBR.
>> I have also tried FDISK /MBR from a Windows 98 Boot CD.
>>
> I believe "fdisk /mbr" loads a simple bootloader that passes
> control to the first sector of the active partition. Check fdisk
> and see which partition is active. I assume you only have one hard
> disk.
>

>> This has always worked like a charm in the past. Where else could
>> GRUB have put itself? and how can I remove it using tools within
>> SUSE.
>>
>
> If grub is in the boot sector of a partition (/dev/hda2 for
> example), and you are booting that partition, then you'll find
> grub. Changing the active partition to the first one (hda1) should
> cause grub to "disappear"
>
> I could be a long way off, as I said I haven't had windows on my
> computers for 6 years. Found this elsewhere, to go in menu.lst,
> which you could try?
>
> title Windows NT
> root (hd0,0)
> makeactive
> chainloader +1

Hi Paul,

Many thanks for your reply. I have left this for a bit to come back to it as it was giving me a headache lol.

You were spot on. GRUB installed itself to the /boot partition which was why scrubbing the MBR did nothing.

For some reason resetting the active parititon did not work at first but did from the Windows 9x Fdisk utility.

I will give your menu.lst entry a go in order to boot the windows partition.

Many thanks.

Regards

Phil.