Windows problems

From openSUSE

WARNING

This page is not a place to write about solving Windows usage problems, but only to write about problems that openSUSE may give to your Windows installation and the way to fix them.

Recovery disk problems

Many computers are nowaday sold with no Windows disk, but with "recovery" disks or partitions. If no disk is given an utility should exist to copy the recovery partition to dvd.

This "recovery partition" is a small part of your computer, usuallay a primary partition, that the bios can boot to make you computer identical at what it was when you buy it. Use of this system may erase completely all the contents of the computer, so it's not pleasant.

As much as you can, ask your dealer for a free copy of a true Windows disk, this is often the only way to recover youy Windows install and your data (and not only after openSUSE use :-().

Install problems

When one install openSUSE on a computer with a previous Windows install, several problems can happen. Bootloader problems are discussed below.

The first problem somebody may have is the risk to lose the Windows files. This is a problem very often seen in the past and very scary.

This shouldn't happen with modern (Aka 10.3 and after) openSUSE.

Making room for openSUSE

openSUSE is very protective about resizing the NTFS Windows partition. It may refuse to resize Vista partition, and this is a good idea because Vista is able to do so itself.

So if you have Vista preinstalled, use Vista to make room on your drive. May be you already have a free data partition (probably a drive named "D:/DATA"). If so, copy all it's content to your main Vista disk, then go to the admin Vista tools and delete this disk to free space.

If this don't give enough space, use the Vista tools to shrink your c:drive. This should be harmless (as long as something can be harmless under Windows).

Install openSUSE

After that you can restart the openSUSE installation and YaST should suggest the use of the free space for itself.

Bootloader problems

Anytime Windows have a boot problem, it hangs and refuses to start. There is no know way to start the installed system, like any openSUSE can do from the install disk.

So one need to repair his Windows install.

Usually this repair do not change the openSUSE boot system.

XP

Usually XP is not too a problem. It's boot system is not very picky and can be booted from GRUB, LILO or GAG with little problem.

However it may happen than you can't boot.

XP repair menu

Sometime, you can boot from the original XP install cd and see a "R" or "Repair" option. This gives you (with admin password) the access to a terminal console no Linux user should fear :-)). Help gives the list of the available commands, mostly obvious by they name and Internet searching will give you all the infos you could need.

But sometime, who knows why, this menu don't show.

Repair install

In this case, you have to start a new install. You don't even have to use your own key protected cd, because what you need is done before any key is asked for. So any friend cd do the job.

Start your install, of course change the Windows install directory not to remove your previous install (Windows is able to do several installs on the same drive).

As soon as you come to the first reboot, you can stop, you should have restored your boot system and be able to see in the boot menu a line for the previous correct XP install.

You have just to manually edit the c:\boot.ini file to remove the new, uncomplete, XP install line.

Full recovery XP Install

However, it may be better to make a full XP install. Do only the minimal install, with no application, this can save you from corrupted normal XP, but this should need activation key and is far from this page goal.

Vista

Vista is very picky about it's boot system, don't use anymore a manually editable boot.ini file, and don't ave a boot system editable from outside of Vista!

Some XP/Vista tools exists but they don't always work as expected and are not free nor opensource, so we won't say more here about them.

But Vista DVD have a repair system that works. So start the install, go through the langage screen then look at the bottom left to the repair system line. Go there.

If it founds your operating system (Vista or XP), so far so good, let it repair. But if he don't find it (saying there is no partition on the drive), don't worry and go ahead. The automatic repair system should find and repair your boot.

This don't seems to disturb GRUB boot system.