[vox-tech] 911 waa!!!

[Trevor M. Lango]

Jimbo wrote:
> Suse has a knoppix like live cd in which it is the OS on cd.  I d/l the iso,
> burned and viola, worked liked a charm.  I was so happy to see that my
> printer is recognized and I loved seeing network neighborhood on my desktop
> and was able to see my other computers on my network that run windoze xp!
> In gui!  Wow.
> 
> I go to frys, buy the 9.1 personel boxed edition, and go about installing it
> on my xp hard drive.  After installation all I got was a black screen with
> the word GRUB in the upper left hand corner of the screen followed by a
> cursor.  No imput of any kind using my keyboard was recognized.  In
> desperation, I tried to install it again going thru the same procedure as I
> did before (using yast).  Same results.

I also experienced this with SuSE before.  I would recommend simply 
attempting to re-install GRUB and ensure that your grub.conf file is 
appropriately written, that GRUB is (ideally) written to the MBR, and 
that your partitioning is sane (perhaps your BIOS is confused as to 
which is the active partition?)

> I shut down, installed another hdd that has a fresh xp install (my backup)
> and slaved the foresaid hdd.  I can see my data fine so I am slowly moving
> my pics d/l's txt and the like.  No big deal, looks like reformat city.
> Have done it a thousand times.

You have two hard drives!?  That is the ideal situation: one hd for win; 
one hd for lin! ;-)

> Well...I pop in my xp cd, which is recognized by the cd rom, but it fails to
> boot from cd when imputed via keyboard.  Hangs at a black screen and then no
> keyboard imput.

Have also had this problem with the XP boot CD.  Got around it by using 
the XP boot floppies (downloadable).

> Googling shows that I may have to rewrite the boot sector but cd has to boot
> first.  I tried slaving it again and xp cd boots fine but cannot repair boot
> sector on affected hdd with either the fixmbr or fixboot commands as
> described from various web sites.
> 
> My theory to my delima is that I didn't defrag my xp os before I installed
> suse therefore resizing the partition nutted up.

Well, that is HIGHLY recommended by SuSE...?  Kick yourself for me! :-/

> I want to have this still work w/o formatting but am at a loss as to why my
> xp cd doesn't boot at all.  I can even take out all my hdd's and the xp cd
> still boots.
> 
> Would it be possible to bring my troubles to the next installfest?  Maybe
> lert?  I am worried that by going to the installfest I will hit another
> brick wall for there is no internet access. Has this changed?

I am in and out of Davis - I might consider stopping by to assist - 
email me privately.

> I am trying so hard to convert to linux but this experience has really
> dampened my spirits.

Don't stop fighting the fine fight! :-D

- Trevor