Installing Windows make me lose Linux boot, how to solve??

[ahmad_abdulghany]

Hi
I was installing Windows XP, and then installed Suse 10.
A while ago, Windows became very bad, and i reinstalled it, and hence losed Linux boot, in other words, i can't access linux now anymore,

I have the four CDs of Suse, how can I solve this problem without reinstalling Linux as I will lose many things on its partion..

Thanks alot in advance,
Ahmad,

 

[safwatonline]

AA ahmed,
long time no seen? where r u man?
anyway for restoring the boot ,i think u need to re-install the grub using suse installation CD,
regards

 

[ksevim]

Re: Installing Windows make me lose Linux boot, how to solve

you can boot linux by using linux cd and then reinstall grub. it works

 

[ahmad_abdulghany]

Re: Installing Windows make me lose Linux boot, how to solve

Thank you for reply,
How're you Safwat

how to install Grub? from the first CD only?
and won't this destroy other data on Linux Partition? specially installed tools...

Thanks in advance,

 

[louisnells]

Re: Installing Windows make me lose Linux boot, how to solve

Hi,
On using GRUB it will rewrite the boot record and it won't destroy any data. So you don't have to re-install anything. And its like

grub-install /dev/hda
OR
grub-install /dev/hdaX

.
One way to avoid this kind of problems is to create a dedicated Linux boot partition (not bigger than 20MB). Even if the windows installer will make it inactive during installation you can just re-activate the Linux boot partition and get in to Linux (and you can do it from DOS fdisk).

 

[safwatonline]

AA abd-al3'any,
sorry ana kont basayef ,
anyway if u still having the problem , i think the grub will be installed on the master boot record which doesnt even exist on the same linux partition , i did what louisnells said in FC3 but i didnt do it in SUSE simply cause i wasnot able to get to the terminal using installation CDs which i did in FC3 , anyway i think it will work fine , to be more sure call Othman he did it b4.
salam

 

[u04f061]

Re: Installing Windows make me lose Linux boot, how to solve

this is very common problem with dual boot using windows and linux. there are many articles on this topic on the internet.her are some links

http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Restore_Grub https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows


these are for ubuntu bcoz i use ubuntu. u may find for suse as well plz try google. although there is a method of restoring grub with live cd. this is i think same for all linux since it works from windows. u may find this method in links above and try for your suse.

 

[maxer]

Re: Installing Windows make me lose Linux boot, how to solve

you can also search on google for "boot manager software" and install it

maxer

 

[coolyas]

Re: Installing Windows make me lose Linux boot, how to solve

HI
to address your problem I think you need to read a little bit about lilo whish is the linux version of ntloader + boot.ini file in your c:\ drive. And if you have suse 10 just boot your pc with cd1 of suse and install lilo you will see It will recognize your windows installatiion and will ask you if you want to start you linux or win in the booting process.
good luck

 

[adi_gupta19]

Re: Installing Windows make me lose Linux boot, how to solve

to avoid this problem, don't install grub on MBR but install grub at the first sector of /boot partition.

hope this will help :
my case

first installed windows xp on first primary ntfs partition hda1
then i have d: and e: as logical fat32 drives hda5 & hda6 respectively

then i have /boot partition on hda7, / partition on hda8 and swap as hda9

after installing linux, booted from floppy and in root terminal i typed

mkdir /mnt/d:
mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /mnt/d:
dd if = /dev/hda7 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/d:/linux.bin

then i restarted in windows
copied linux.bin image from d: to c:
add the following line to the c:\boot.ini file using notepad.
c:\linux.bin="red hat linux 9"
and saved in it.

now restart the system
u will see two option at boot
1. windows xp
2. red hat linux 9

now reinstalling of one operating system cannot interfere with the boot of the other operating system.

hope it helped

 

[mehboob_iiui]

Re: Installing Windows make me lose Linux boot, how to solve

install linux after you install windows, or just install boot loader from linux