OpenSUSE Install :: Plugging Up Windows Disk Overwrites MBR?
Jun 6, 2010
I had an old Windows disk I wanted to see if I could get some files off of. I was a Windows XP installation, but it got a virus of some sort and eventually died completely. I had always wanted to try to get my files off of it so I could wipe it and use it as another drive. Well, I plugged it up in my computer and thought that it would just recognize it as a regular data disk, but instead somehow it got automatically set as the boot drive. The computer went from the BIOS splash screen to blank and back a couple times before booting Windows. I then tried resetting the other drive as the boot drive and also unplugging the Windows disk with the same result: an MBR error screen.
I fixed the issue by reinstalling the MBR with the repair tools in the openSUSE disk but I am really curious if anyone knows why this happened. Is it a Windows issue or a motherboard issue or perhaps something else?. My old computer was about 7 years old but this new one is well, brand new. So I haven't had much experience with newer motherboards but I know they have come out with a lot of new features so for all I know they may have something that can detect a Windows install and rewrite the MBR or something. I also wouldn't put it past MS to influence($) MB makers to include such a feature.
The one problem I have now is that the boot options no longer display the kernel version, and the splash screen with the progress bar no longer shows, just the standard text.
View 2 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Feb 12, 2010
Yast completely overwrites my very customized /boot/grub/menu.lst. I wrote a Perl script to restore the customizations from the previous version (retained in CVS) but this is more than a little annoying. At least Ubuntu asks. How do I stop this idiocy when upgrading the kernel.
View 8 Replies
View Related
May 20, 2010
I recently bought a new Gateway desktop. I use mostly Ubuntu but like to boot into Windows once in a while. Have used Ubuntu as my main OS for about 3 to 4 years, dual booting. After the Ubuntu 10.04 release, I decided to throw in another hard drive into the new computer and make it dual boot.
Mistakes:
1. I did not create the Gateway Recovery Disk in Windows before installing Ubuntu.
2. Installed Ubuntu 10.04 without disconnecting the Windows 7 drive.
3. The Ubuntu install never prompted me asking where to install Grub (apparently there is an advanced menu somewhere in the install process that lets you select), and it was installed to the first drive on the PC by default, which happened to be the Win 7 drive.
This left the Windows 7 unbootable because it did not appear in the Grub menu. I did some searching and managed to install Grub on the second drive (the one with the Ubuntu install) and also managed to add Windows 7 to the Grub menu so I could boot into Windows. This last procedure added the Windows 7 option to the Grub on both drives.
I then managed to fix the Windows 7 mbr using /fixmbr and /fixboot. The problems I still have are as following. I can't create the Windows Gateway Recovery Disk in Windows. Every time I try, I get a message telling me "Hard drive configuration is not set to the factory default. Restore aborted.". I already disconnected the Ubuntu drive but get the same results. I know this one is not a Linux issue, but maybe someone had a similar issue and might be able to help.
The next problem I have is that it looks like after the las Kernel update in Ubuntu, Grub overwrote the Windows 7 mbr again. Is there a setting file somewhere that now tells Ubuntu that Grub is installed in two places and that whenever there is an update it updates both? Can I change this? I really would like to avoid re-installing Ubuntu to fix this.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Dec 2, 2010
My system, OpenSuSE 11.3 (box2), has two physical disks in one volume group. One disk is almost empty. Unfortunately I need to install Windows XP as dual boot. (Yes, I know it would be easier to do this the other way around.) I plan to repartition the almost empty disk to make room for a Windows XP partition. The disk is NOT the primary master disk, because that's where my OpenSuSE 11.3 resides.
Will I break LVM if I install Windows XP? Will XP boot under lvm? Do I need to remove the disk from of the volume group before installing XP?
Box 2: OpenSuSE 11.3 || KDE 4.4.4 || 2.6.34.7-0.5-default || i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+
View 7 Replies
View Related
Feb 5, 2010
I am dual booting OpenSUSE and Windows 7 Pro x64. Each OS is installed on a separate 1Tb hard drive. One question that I have tried to Google for a solution with no success is, how do you access ext4 from Windows? Shortly after I installed OpenSUSE, my OpenSUSE hard drive "vanished" from Windows 7. aturally, I can access all my hard drives from OpenSUSE, which does support the NTFS. I am quite sure that I am not the only person who has this problem as I know that dual booting Linux and Windows is quite common.
View 8 Replies
View Related
Apr 8, 2011
I have multi-version Kernels on a Dual Boot WinXP / openSUSE 11,3 box. It's been a LONG time since I needed to boot to Win XP and now that I find that I can't get to it, I can not say for sure what I did to break it. Looking back, I suspect that the method I used for the recent removal of one of the Kernel versions may have been innappropiate. Rather than unchecking in versions/package groups I may have just removed the unwanted kernel in the package list. Not sure. I've tried dinking around with menu.lst and Yast Boot Loader to no success. I get errors depending on what I messed with. Didn't try to reinstall grub until I checked here for help with a fix.
Here's some info:
Code:
View 9 Replies
View Related
Sep 10, 2011
i 've an hp laptop with 2 120gb hdds. On hd1 there used to be vista plus the hp recovery partition and hd2 was for storage.When i moved to opensuse 11.1 as the primary OS some 3 years ago, i set it on hd2, with / , /home and swap partitions and left hd1 as is.
I have two questions.
first / seems to be out of space (i tried to install a gcc compiler and i got a warning). Is there anything i can do? Can i resize it on a live system? Can i delete/compress something on it safely?
Second: i currently use windows only for a tv card and a couple of old games so no need for 100 gb on this partition.Is it safe to repartition it? Partitioner says i should not partition on a live system but it appears not to be mounted?
File System:
File System: NTFS
Mount Point:
Label: OS
If i resize it to, say, 40 gb and try to partition the rest, how should i mount it? I get the options /local, tmp and srv. Can i mount it somehow to use it for example for music or downloads storage?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Nov 16, 2010
i come from ubuntu installation and i have had opensuse before and i remember installing any of thede two without any problem on any of many harddisk arrangement. but thge ltest opensuse 11.3 doesnt pllay nice with my windows and ubuntu installation booting. i reember using boot loader in yast and it used to load the coorect setting from scratch. but now when i chose "propose new configuration" and it founds opensuse and three other windows!
[Code]...
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jan 5, 2010
On a new 13 install using xfce pluggingin a usb thumb drive causes two file manager windows to open on the desktop.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Sep 28, 2010
Background: I'm a 20+ year Mac user, switched four years ago to Linux.I have NO experience with Windows to speak of. Whenever I've gotten a new box, it's either been home-built or a Mac.Now I have a new Acer Aspire AS7551 laptop, and although I have not yet booted into Windows, it comes with a Windows 7 Home Premium license. I've been running it with Ubuntu 10.04 off a flash drive and everything works perfectly.
What I want to do: I want to wipe the disk, install Lucid, and run Windows in Virtualbox (for the sole purpose of watching some Netflix and learning a little bit about Windows 7). For the purpose of this question, please accept that I DO NOT want to dual boot.The problem: From what I can find, I can't use the "recovery discs" that came with my laptop to create a virtual machine. This is confusing, because it seems like I paid for a legitimate Windows license for use with this laptop.
Questions:
1. Would MS exchange my recovery discs for a regular install disc to go with my license code if I explained this to them?
2. If not, is there a source for Windows ISOs that I can safely use with my license? (I am aware that the legitimacy of that approach is questionable, but I am quite comfortable with the ethics since I paid for Windows 7, own the license, and only want to use it on the same computer.
3.If not,is there any way in heck I can use my recovery disc to create something Virtualbox can work with?
4. If not, how are all of you people getting your Windows virtual machines going??
(I have read that Acer is a major hassle to get a refund from for the "Windows tax" so I might as well be able to use it--this is MS' chance to win over a fan if only they will let me!)
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jan 2, 2010
My dual proc, dual core Opteron MSI Master2FAR motherboard failed, and I try to boot a disk, used on this board as boot disk, on an Intel based Gigabyte GA-965-DS3. Both systems are x86_64 architecture.
The OS is on both systems is openSUSE 11.1.
On booting the disk on the Gigabyte, the disk is seen correctly by the BIOS, but not by the OS, and there is no /dev/sdX; no /dev/disk/... either. I am taken to a login shell from the ramdisk.
When I just mount this disk on the Gigabyte (booted with the Gigabyte's original boot disk) everything seems fine. No suprise to me, since the disk was fine, and was unmounted gracefully and physically taken off the MSI before the board failed.
I think that the cause lies in the fact that the harddisk controller on the Gigabyte is different from the MSI, and the driver for that controller is not available at boot time.
I have two questions:
- is my assumption correct, or is something else going on?
- if I am right, is there a way to get this disk booting on the Gigabyte (or on another system, for that matter)?
You might want to ask why I want to boot this disk on the Gigabyte in the first place, since I can mount it and see all data on it. I have a reason for that, but telling that story would make this topic too long, and it's too off-topic. Most certainly I will get to that in another topic.
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jan 19, 2011
I have been using Fedora 13 for about 3 and a half months now maybe more and i have made the decision to switch back to windows. It is not that i have any complaints about Fedora but trying to get vent to work has been an uphill battle and i like to try many diffrent games and Fedora is just not compatible with all the games i would like to play, anyway my problem is that i cannot boot from the windows install disk i have it just loads Fedora no matter what i do.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Nov 14, 2010
I've just switched from kubuntu to opensuse 11.3 and I noticed that I can't view my other (windows) disk drives in dolphin. In kubuntu, there used to be 2 extra icons for my other disks in the 'places' pane, but they are not there in opensuse. How can I get them back on this pane please?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Nov 27, 2010
Ubuntu have a great tool (the best) Startup Disk Creator help we make a live USB for Ubuntu!My question is: can I use it for an windows.iso!? Can I use this to make an USB to Install window!?After that i will bring my two USB around, see my friend and say:"Hey, do you want a fress install Window (they will lost there license) and after that - Sr, but why dont try Ubuntu!)
View 4 Replies
View Related
Mar 27, 2011
Is it possible to improve Wine with a Windows install disk? I know if copy DLLs from a Windows computer, it makes some games work that don't work. Is there any way of doing this right from the install CD, without installing Windows on a computer first?
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 1, 2011
I have a dualboot installation of Linux and its commercial rivals.I noticed that Linux makes great hard disk noise that I was not able to hear while using Windows.Is it due to filesystem?
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jun 22, 2011
GRUB2 replaced the boot entry for Windows 7 when I installed Windows XP. I tried to create my own menu entry for Windows XP but it seamed to me that it was superseded by the Windows 7 boot loader. I have a brand new desktop PC - Core i7 processor, 2 TB hard drive, 6 GB RAM.
I don't know how to bring back a menu entry that was over written / Superseded by another OS being detected by update-grub; in this case Windows 7. I installed Ubuntu 11.04 at the end of many other Linux OS's. So it is a Multi-boot setup. Basically Windows XP has replaced the Windows 7 boot entry in the GRUB 2 Boot menu after running update-grub.
Then to get Windows 7 back I booted off the Windows 7 Install DVD and used the boot repair option. This then changed the working Windows XP Boot Loader to boot Windows 7 which I wanted but there was a catch. Windows XP didn't boot any more because it was replaced / Superseded. The Linux OS's boot fine.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Sep 29, 2010
I'm running openSUSE 11.3 and screwed some things up so that I can't install anything, including UNetbootin. So I decided to completely reinstall. I'm limited to using my hard drive as there's no CD/DVD or floppy drives installed on the machine and BIOS does not support booting from USB.
I found these instructions - Install any Linux distro directly from hard disk without burning any DVD - Just Another Linux Lover Blog
From the terminal enter these commands
sudo mkdir /distro
sudo chmod `whoami`:`whoami`
cp MYLINUX.iso /distro/distro.iso
Now extract Linux_kernel & Ram_disk to /distro#
Open /boot/grub/menu.lst
#ADD NEW ENTRY#
title Install Linux
root (hdX,X)
kernel /distro/Linux_kernel
initrd /distro/Ram_disk
Reboot and select "Install Linux" from grub. Blog Widget by LinkWithin
Creating the folder "distro" on root was easy and went smoothly. I can't seem to make the second 'whoami' command work, though. I copied-and-pasted "sudo chmod `whoami`:`whoami`" into the terminal. It asks me for the root password, I enter that and then get
chmod: missing operand after `holly:holly'
Try `chmod --help' for more information.
I didn't see anyone reply in the comments of that page saying they had trouble with it, so I think I'm just being an idiot. One person did suggest adding distro at the end on another page and it gets me
chmod: invalid mode: `holly:holly'
Try `chmod --help' for more information.
View 9 Replies
View Related
May 27, 2011
I am going to install the ubuntu 10.0.4LTS to my hard disk under windows XP, here is what i tried
1.down the iso:ubuntu-10.04.2-desktop-i386.iso file from ubuntun.com
2.down the unetbootin-win-549.exe and write the iso file to my USB disk
3.reboot my system to boot from usb disk
4.as i expect, every thing goes well util i got the err like this:
Installation Failed The following file did not match its source copy on the CD/DVD: /target/use/lib/openoffice/basis3.2/program/lib/plug_genli.so
[Code]...
View 9 Replies
View Related
Oct 22, 2009
I need to install windows xp and linux in separate hard disk on my computer.Is it possible?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jun 28, 2011
I was going to try to install plop on a windows 2000 so that I could dual boot win and linux. I ran [URL] to install. In the command window it said that the program can't be run under a Dos box and only to continue in I was not running in windows. If I tell it to continue, windows gives me an error message that says it is trying to write directly to the hard disk. It asks me to abort or ignore. If I ignore, the program seems to run. Is this not the right way to install plop to the hard disk?
View 2 Replies
View Related
Jul 29, 2010
when I attempt to scan anything with clamav from a terminal I get the following error:
ERROR: Can't create temporary directory /var/lib/clamav/clamav-da584cb3f4ee38529f0460ad6f7dc632
Hint: The database directory must be writable for UID 999 or GID 100
Which I take to mean that there are no virus definitions installed. I use the "freshclam" command. Which results in the following error:
ERROR: Can't create temporary directory /var/lib/clamav/clamav-da584cb3f4ee38529f0460ad6f7dc632
Hint: The database directory must be writable for UID 999 or GID 100
View 5 Replies
View Related
Mar 1, 2010
I have a hardisk shared on my windows machine. And I would like to be able to access this on my opensuse notebook. Just cant figure it out. Dont have much experience in opensuse. I just need to know the best way to do this. Also, can opensuse read/write NTFS? Also I have a printer on my moms machine that runs XP home. The printer is shared I would like to be able to print but its no biggie. It some type of HP 3 in 1. I just wnat it to print, I dont care about the scanner and stuff.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Dec 10, 2010
My ethernet controller is configured as such:
My /etc/resolv.conf file is normally just set up to use Google's public DNS:
When I connect to the network at the university library, it totally overwrites my /etc/resolv.conf file to something like:
This is pretty annoying, so I tried comprimising by making a file with the school's domain and search entries plus the Google nameservers, then revoking write permission on the file. However, I couldn't access any domain name with this config on their network, so I reverted to using their nameservers. I keep all the school's entries commented out when I connect to my home network.
My ultimate question is what is actually overwriting the file? I suspect that my connecting through DHCP is responsible. Whatever it is, I'm pretty annoyed that no back up file was created.
View 10 Replies
View Related
Jul 4, 2011
When i try to install UBUNTU 11.04 it shows me the warning that there is no OS on my hard disk.But i have windows XP SP3 & UBUNTU 10.04 on my hard disk. Will all the files be deleted on my hard disk containing Windows XP if i install UBUNTU 11.04? How can i solve the problem?
View 3 Replies
View Related
Aug 31, 2011
I've recently added a new hard disk and due to mother board controllers this new hard disk is known as sda.Before that my boot partition was /dev/sda3 and know this changed to sdb3.Whenever grub menu appears and I choose opensuse,it can't find /dev/sda3 .It seems that I should edit menu.lst or change boot loader parameter.something like root (hd1,2).But I don't how I can do this with opensuse boot loader.Though I could do this with CentOS easily.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Mar 29, 2010
I need to install GRUB on my USB-drive. I've gone through variety of manuals and articles but I have strange errors during install.
1) Insert USB in my laptop.
2) My OpenSUSE automatically mount an USB-drive, so I unmount it
Code: umount /media/disk-1
3) Format USB-drive into ext3
[Code].....
View 3 Replies
View Related
Sep 13, 2011
I would like to test 12.1 M5 on my real hardware, so I have special for this purpose two additional partitions (sda2 (to install milestone) and sda3 (to store installation ISO files)). I am running my stable 11.4 with Grub on sda1.
I do not like to burn DVDs just for short test of one milestone, so I was used to download DVD ISO, to unpack it to sda3 partition with all its files, then I changed Grub to boot install Linux from sda3. Installation complains there is no DVD or CD, then I chose to force installation from hard disk and select sda3 partition and select root directory "/". As I was used to from 11.4 this will start installation as it would be started from DVD.
But I think the problem has appeared since 12.1, where I get message: No repository found. (on sda3 / ), so the installation does not start.
I know this is not official way to install openSuse, but it worked before, and it was fast and easy for me, to install from hard disk.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Feb 2, 2011
I have a DELL D420 without optical drive and i want to install opensuse 11.3 on it, also i don't have an external Optical drive. I want to know if it's possible to install OpenSuse 11.3 from a Flash drive or Amovible disk, and how to proceed to do that.
PS: is it a good idea to install Opensuse on dell d420: C2D ulv 1.2, 1gb ram, 60 HD ? it it'll work well.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Aug 30, 2010
Recently I was working on something on my windows partition (on the same HD as opensuse), and all the sudden windows stopped working and I got some bad sectors on my HD.
Now, my opensuse installation is on the same HD as windows, but I need to get rid of that HD soon because it's starting to get worse (and I think opensuse is randomly crashing because of it).
Is there any way to transfer my opensuse parititon/os to another hard drive?
View 9 Replies
View Related
