Author Topic: Need a little help with a dual boot (Read 12378 times)

eyelevel · « **on:** February 18, 2004, 09:32:28 PM »

I have 2 hard drives. One use to have winxp on it(primary one), the other had redhat 9 on it(slave hd). I recently had to reformat and reinstall winxp on the primary hd. So it erased my boot loader, grub. Now I cant boot into linux. I want to get rid of redhat and install suse 9 in its place, since im learning suse at school. What will I need to do? Can I just place the suse install disk in, reboot and install on the partition redhat was on? This wont cause any trouble with windows will it?

Ricky · « **Reply #1 on:** February 19, 2004, 04:55:08 AM »

Well. if you want to get back your RH to boot then you Have to boot your maching with your RH installation cd and then RUN "linux rescue" and there give

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grub-install /dev/hdbBut as u said you want to use Suse.. then simply start installing and install it over the previous RH partition. and it won't hurt your windowss...

neo · « **Reply #2 on:** February 19, 2004, 11:10:18 AM »

i think ricky the bootloader was on the primary hdd so what he should do is

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grub-install /dev/hda

Ricky · « **Reply #3 on:** February 19, 2004, 11:17:38 AM »

Oh..
This time i got a mistake..
Thank you! Rohit..

eyelevel · « **Reply #4 on:** February 22, 2004, 10:34:12 PM »

I put the suse install cd in and rebooted to cdrom and installed suse(disk1 anyways) over redhat's partition. After completing disk1 it reboots, I choose boot from hard disk. It then is suppose to load grub but all I get is a black screen with grub in white letters in the upper left corner. I cant boot windows or suse or redhat as of now. What should I do? Im freaking out man!

Also I installed grub to hda and installed suse to hdb6. Windows is on hda.

eyelevel · « **Reply #5 on:** February 22, 2004, 11:10:52 PM »

I booted xp with a boot disk and reinstalled the windows mbr, BUT OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY SECOND HARD DRIVE IS REPORTING NO DATA WHATSOEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It says the hard drive has not been formatted, and it asks if I would like to do so now!!!! I had alot of important data on that drive. Is there anyway I can get it back? Without having to pay someone to do it for me.

dalek · « **Reply #6 on:** February 23, 2004, 12:11:38 AM »

Windoze can't read Linux partitions so don't worry, it is likely still there. You just need to get that bootloader back on the drive so you can boot Linux.

I have not ever used SuSE before but you should be able to install the bootloader from the install CD just like you did before, only correctly this time.

Hope that helps a little.

Later

eyelevel · « **Reply #7 on:** February 23, 2004, 02:02:34 AM »

I know windows cant read the linux partition but I also have a 60gb partition for media(music,movies,software) that is formatted ntfs style. But windows doesnt pick it up. I told suse to use a 10gb partition(hdb6) which is where redhat9 use to be. But its like suse tried to use the whole disk. I ran a file recovery program, which is taking forever(1 hour=5%done), but it is recognizing all my old files so I guess this is what I need to do for now.

Ricky · « **Reply #8 on:** February 23, 2004, 05:34:50 AM »

You are saying that Suse has taken all the partition ie.. whole disk.. ya this could be the condition here.. I think you forgot to tell suse that use only the earlier linux partitions.. May be you have done the mistake..
Now say prayer that your old data get back to u!!
Then try to install Susu or any other linux distro..with peace ie. without hurry!