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WARNING! DUAL BOOTING SuSE 9.1 WITH XP
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Xeroid
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Joined: 19 Apr 2003
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 3:17 am    Post subject: WARNING! DUAL BOOTING SuSE 9.1 WITH XP Reply with quote
Quote:
Windows No Longer Boots Following the Installation of SUSE LINUX 9.1


Applies to: SUSE LINUX 9.1

Situation

Following the installation of SUSE LINUX 9.1, the Linux system can be booted, but the Windows system no longer boots. After selecting the Windows entry in the boot loader GRUB, a message such as the following is displayed:

root (hd 0,0)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
chainloader +1

The computer stops at this point.

The Windows boot loader may also stop with an error message (if GRUB/LILO was *not* installed in the MBR during the installation and the Windows loader was retained).

The problem cannot be solved by restoring the original MBR with YaST or by writing a new MBR with Windows tools (with the command FIXMBR or with FIXBOOT from the Windows rescue console). Repairing the partition table with proprietary partitioning tools does not solve the problem either, but may even destroy the entire partition table.

The problem cannot even be solved by uninstalling Linux or installing Windows anew without deleting the entire hard disk.

Cause

The partitioning tool parted which YaST uses during the installation may write an incorrect partition table.

The problem occurs if

* The BIOS and Linux "see" different disk geometries AND
* The Windows partition is larger than about 8 GB (more precisely: if the first hard disk partition ends on cylinder 1024 or beyond this point).

When the system is booted, Windows may use the values in the partition table, which causes a failure.

Currently, this problem also occurs on other Linux distributions using kernel 2.6.

Solution

One quick solution is to activate the (LBA or large) access mode (under which the hard disk was previously addressed) for the hard disk(s) in the computer's BIOS. Important: the hard disk values should not be set to "AUTO".

If this does not help (or if your BIOS does not offer this option), you can repair the partition table with a driver update. To do this, proceed as follows: On our FTP server, you will find two images at ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/9.1/misc/parted/: one for creating a floppy disk and one for creating a CD.


http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/05/fhassel_windows_not_booting91.html


Moderated:

I removed the announcement tag from this post because I made one 'announcement' post to point to the 2 threads about XP dual boot issues.

--mmmna


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mmmna
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Joined: 21 Apr 2003
Posts: 7258
PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 4:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Something has been set a bit off to one side here..... This MBR/LBA issue only started with the 2.6 kernel, but the fix is not patching the kernel. Why?



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Mow
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Joined: 22 Oct 2003
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 11:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
And one other thing to note is that it seems using different drives for your different OS's seems get around this problem. Of course I've alwasy been under the contention that you should always keep your OS's seperate but that is just me Smile
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sasha
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Xeroid, you have your box triple booted, don't you??? Did you kill those partitions or did you research first???
Good thing you posted this. Smile
That's another distro that a newbie can't choose if he wants to dual boot. Sad That's bad, really bad. Sad
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nukes
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Joined: 29 Aug 2003
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
It doesn't kill the partitions, but it sets the partition table to CHS again. You can fix it by running "fdisk -o" to rebuild the table using LBA.
I really don't get where this problem came from - maybe they're all using a dodgy version of fdisk??
I've been using the 2.5/2.6 kernel since 2.5.51 and haven't had this issue - even when I was booting with XP on it.

I can see this generating a lot of bad press for Linux in general as we can't say that Linux won't hose your windows setup (I know it doesn't hose it, but the fix is more than most newbies will manage)



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schleyfox
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Joined: 25 Jan 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 1:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
The only thing is Mandrake 10 dual boots very well so what is mandrake doing that Fedora and SuSe arent?



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Xeroid
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
sasha wrote:
Xeroid, you have your box triple booted, don't you??? Did you kill those partitions or did you research first???
Good thing you posted this. Smile
That's another distro that a newbie can't choose if he wants to dual boot. Sad That's bad, really bad. Sad


I went into the BIOS setup and changed my drives from "Auto" to "LBA" before installing. I was able to preserve my triple boot without any problems.
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sasha
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 4:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
That's good Very Happy
I would never think of doing anything like that... I'd just rely on the smartness of the OS. Smile
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maillion
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Joined: 30 Mar 2004
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Location: Texas, USA, Terra
PostPosted: Thu Jun 17, 2004 10:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
sasha wrote:
Xeroid, you have your box triple booted, don't you??? Did you kill those partitions or did you research first???
Good thing you posted this. Smile
That's another distro that a newbie can't choose if he wants to dual boot. Sad That's bad, really bad. Sad


I think it is an XP problem - I had dual boot set up with Knoppix/Debian and Win98 - no problems. Then I decided to try out XP, and even though I did not have it set to NTFS, it hosed my dual boot, and it took me weeks and multiple formats on both drives to get it back. XP became a coaster, then a temporary reflective mobile, then a deposit into my 'circular account'... Mad
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DeFi
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Joined: 09 Jun 2004
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 4:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I am dual booting SuSE 9.1 and XP with no issues at all.... works flawlessly
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Xeroid
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 5:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
DeFi wrote:
I am dual booting SuSE 9.1 and XP with no issues at all.... works flawlessly


That's good! Very Happy

SuSE 9.1 hosed my MBR on the first try at install. SuSE is a little different in how it goes onto your system from CD. It installs the first CD, reboots, then installs the other 4.

The first time it rebooted I knew I had a problem. Lilo didn't appear and all I got on the screen was L 99 99 99 99 99 . . .

Since I was only one disk into my SuSE install, I got out my XP install disk, booted to the recovery console, and did a fixmbr. This got Win98 and XP back.

I then went into my BIOS setup and looked. Sure enough I had my hard disk drives set to "auto" instead of "LBA". I changed this, restarted the SuSE install and after disk #1 was finished my machine rebooted and everything was golden. I was able to install the other 4 CDs and get my Linux system back up too. Very Happy

BTW, I have Win 98 & XP on one HD (Western Digital) and SuSE 9.1 Linux on another HD (Seagate).
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Xeroid
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 5:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
To set your hard disk drives to LBA:

1- Reboot your PC and enter the BIOS setup.
.
2- Go to STANDARD CMOS FEATURES.

3- IDE Primary Master - IDE Primary Slave or if you have a HD on your secondary, IDE Secondary Master - IDE Secondary Slave.

3- Access Mode.

4- Make sure all your HDs are set to LBA and not AUTO.
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sasha
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 8:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Xeroid wrote:
The first time it rebooted I knew I had a problem. Lilo didn't appear and all I got on the screen was L 99 99 99 99 99 . . .


This is exactly what I had when I did my first install wrong. I didn't place the boot loader in MBR and that was my message too.
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Xeroid
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 18, 2004 9:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
sasha wrote:

This is exactly what I had when I did my first install wrong. I didn't place the boot loader in MBR and that was my message too.


I wish I could remember the error message I received during the install. It was something to the effect of "Lilo couldn't understand my drive architecture" when it tried to install into the MBR of my win drive. As soon as the PC rebooted after the first CD I got the "L 99 99 99 . . ."
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nukes
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Joined: 29 Aug 2003
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 01, 2004 10:29 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
This may be of interest:
http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-traffic/kt20040630_265.html#1



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