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Slight problem with dual-boot

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daga5831

Member
Joined
Feb 6, 2003
Location
Canada, eh? (BC)
Yeah...so I still rely on WinXP a little bit. I try to use Linux as much as possible, but sometimes I just have to give in. Anyways...I've been using slackware for a while, but I thought I'd give SuSE a try. So yesterday I installed SuSE, did all the configuring, and started using it. It's been going fine, until just a few minutes ago when I had to go back into Windows to do something. It said something about "Disk boot error...INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". I have Linux on hda and Windows on hdb, but would it still be possible for the SuSE installation to have written over the MBR on hdb?

When I was setting up the partitions for the installation, I accidently deleted the Windows partitions, but I didn't apply the changes - I hit the "back" button right away.

Did I screw something up? Will I have to re-install Windows? Will Batman escape the clutches of the evil Joker? Tune in tomorrow - same bat-time, same bat-channel.

Little help? Thanks in advance :).
 
I think the disk boot error is from bios, not from grub or whatever would be installed in the MBR of the windows disk. Inside SuSE, you can fdisk /dev/hdb to look at the partitions on that disk. I believe it is possible to recover after the partions were deleted, but it's probably not an easy task.
 
Well...I figured out what went wrong...I went into the Windows recovery console and pulled up a mapping of my system. It turns out that I somehow managed to delete my C:\ drive. I don't remember doing this, and I don't remember switching anything around, but somehow my old D:\ drive has now taken over the C:\ position and the old E:\ has taken over the old D:\.

I think this is a sign from the computer gods that Linux is about to beat the schmooboogies out of M$. Either that, or they just want me to have Linux on the faster HDD :D (been running it on an older, slower drive).

When I get home from work tonight, I'm gonna re-install windows, use Partition Magic to resize and combine paritions and I'll have WinXP and SuSE on the same HDD (gonna be a few hours :p).
 
Well...I tried to use Partition Magic to combine the old D and E drives, but it crashed and I lost all the contents of both drives :(. Luckily I copied most of my important stuff to my laptop last week :D. Unfortunately, I lost a few hundred hours worth of work on some things - nothing important, but it's still irritating :mad:.
 
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