GRUB Error

[directhex]

i'll explain the issues as i see them, on by one, before suggesting anything further.

first, the drive letter assignment is a bit funny - sda should be (hd0) in grub-speak, sdb should be (hd1) and so on. your device.map file is making it the reverse of how it should be (i.e. device.map should be normal, and your menu.lst should use hd0 throughout). that's the first "weird" bit

next is the partition table. ms-dos partition tables allow 4 partition tables: up to 4 primary partitions, and up to 1 extended partition, to a total of 4. inside the extended, you can have up to 12 logical partitions. one characteristic of the layout, is that it should be all primaries, THEN the extended. like this: P,P,P,E(L,L,L,L,L). yours is odd, because it's like this: P,E(L),P,P. it's possible the windows boot loader ntldr is getting confused by it. for example, here's my partition table:

/dev/sda1   *           1        3824    30716248+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            3825       19457   125572072+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5            3825        3857      265041   83  Linux
/dev/sda6            3858        4131     2200873+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7            4132       19457   123106063+  83  Linux

The first partition is primary (NTFS), the second one is extended, then all the rest are logical - where logical partitions count from 5 onwards (the first 4 are the reserved numbers for the 4 primary).

finally, your error message. if everything you've detailed is true, then the grub assignment for your windows drive SHOULD be, as it stands, (hd1,4) - this ought to correspond to /dev/sda5. See the message you get when grub tries to load it? "Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7"? that's not normal. grub is normally happy to use unrecognised file systems, as long as you don't ask it to read any files. for example, from mine:

grub> root (hd0,0)
root (hd0,0)

No error, even though it's NTFS and unknown:

   Partition num: 0,  Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7

so far, the best suggestions we have as to why it's erroring are a dodgy partition (i.e. a disk resize went wonky), or SUSE has a weird modified version of grub which behaves in abnormal ways.

so. now what? i'd like one more command's output, before giving you instructions on getting a windows-only boot going again (which means you can try fixing grub again at a later date). open a terminal, switch to the root user using "su", then run "grub". if that gives an error, try "/usr/sbin/grub". you should get that command prompt you talked about earlier - here, type "geometry (hd1)". it should tell you what GRUB thinks your partition table looks like, not linux.

[ctid]

Thanks for your help. Might this have all been caused by me using partition magic to shrink my sda1 partition so I had space to install linux on?

Here's the output from geometry (hd1):

geometry (hd1)
drive 0x81: C/H/S = 19452/255/63, The number of sectors = 312500000, /dev/sda
   Partition num: 0,  Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
   Partition num: 2,  Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x82
   Partition num: 3,  Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
   Partition num: 4,  Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7

Thanks

[directhex]

right. one last thing to try then. remember when i told you to set it to:

title Windows
root (hd1,4)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

?

change it to:

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,4)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

note, this SHOULD NOT WORK. if it does, then suse is what has caused - and kept - the problems.

[ctid]

Nope, didnt work. Get an Error 12: Invalid device requested

[directhex]

i suspect grub is choking on your dodgy partition table after all.

right, reverting time. insert windows cd, boot from it, enter recovery console, type "fixboot" then "fixmbr"

that should get you a windows-only boot. it's possible you wont' be able to get a dual-boot going as long as the partition table is invalid.

[ctid]

Thanks unfortunately my XP disc is back home, and I'm living at uni. I need to use linux for the next couple of weeks, as I need to use Quanta Plus for an assignment. I'll just have to live without windows until I move home for xmas.

Thanks for all your help

[directhex]

Thanks unfortunately my XP disc is back home, and I'm living at uni. I need to use linux for the next couple of weeks, as I need to use Quanta Plus for an assignment. I'll just have to live without windows until I move home for xmas.

Thanks for all your help

that's your best plan for now, then.

if you want it, you can have the super-secret incantations to fix the partition order, which might fix things (equally, it might balls them up). best to wait until xmas though

[ctid]

If I tried to fix the partition order and ballsed it up, could I just run the openSUSE livecd and reinstall it to my harddrive to get openSUSE back?

If I could, I'll give it a go. I'd be in no worse a state then I am now. For some reason, I can't access one of my harddrives, even though it was listed as sdb1. media:/sdb1 doesnt work.

[directhex]

If I tried to fix the partition order and ballsed it up, could I just run the openSUSE livecd and reinstall it to my harddrive to get openSUSE back?

worst case scenario: you lose ALL your data from that disk

For some reason, I can't access one of my harddrives, even though it was listed as sdb1. media:/sdb1 doesnt work.

it's showing up as a single 200 gig partition, of type SFS (an obscure encrypted file system). what SHOULD it be?

[ikonia]

I can walk you through an exceptionally long winded effort that will get you working with suse and windows, but it all depends what is on your /dev/sdb disk ? and how much effort you want to do for this.

[ctid]

/dev/sdb is fat32 iirc. Either that or NTFS. It's just used as a storage drive, with music and stuff on.