Re: [opensuse] Installation of 11.4 fails: Error 22 for GRUB --- now also Windows disappeared!

On 2011/07/05 23:39 (GMT+0100) Oliver Kullmann composed:

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, I don't know any of the
tools mentioned, and thus I can't transfer it (or just
apply it) to my situation.

It seems that just that boot-record has been deleted/damaged,
and only that needs to be brought back.

Suse used to have a repair-option in the installation-system,
with some generic options.

It got too complicated to maintain by the available maintenance resources, so was dropped.

But only "Rescue system" is left,
which is of no use to me, since I have no clue about the commands
which could be used here.

So well, just to try it out, I went to that Rescue system, logged
in as root. And now???

Execute command help at the rescue prompt.

# help

That lists commands internal to the rescue shell.

# fdisk

Allows you to put a bootable flag back on the Win7 "boot" partition, among other things, like "printing" (display on screen) out the table so that we can see what you have that may help us help you.

# mount

Like in normal mode, allows to mount a partition in order to access its contents.

Once you've figured out which partition contains your Linux boot files, whether separate /boot or /boot on /, you mount that partition, then restore the MBR copy that the openSUSE installer created there as "backup_mbr".

Ordinarily, you could use dd to write that file back to the MBR, but in your case you tried installing both without a separate /boot partition and again with. Only whichever you did first, if it still exists, would put you back where you were originally, so I'd skip this attempt to fix route entirely.

What needed would be a simple menu entry "Restore boot record"

If you could boot DOS, either floppy, USB stick or optical disk, then all you'd need is:

C:\> fdisk /mbr

Then open fdisk interactively and ensure that the active flag is set on the Win7 "boot" partition.

As I suggested upthread, http://ultimatebootcd.com/ has an iso you can burn that enables such repairs as well as many others, and hardware tests, and more. It includes Ranish Partition Manager, which can write a new standard MBR (partman /mbr) as well as set the boot flag (interactive operation).

See also http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Restoring_Windows_MBR
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words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
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