PROBLEM WITH SUSE PRO 9.1

[moveit]

I have bought SuSE 9.1 Professional to try. Before loading it onto my main computer I decided to try it on my laptop which has OS Windows 2000. I loaded SuSE and allowed it to make a separate partition on the hard drive. When everything was loaded I re-booted and tried to get into Windows 2000 but I got the error message "NTLDR is missing. Press any key to restart"
I think I should have made a separate partition but as I am new to Linux I thought it best to allow SuSE to make the partition which it said it could do.
Can anyone advise what the error message means because I
eventually want to load SuSE onto my main computer which has three hard drives. C: has Windows 2000, D: is where I keep my data and E: is for Linux when I load it.
Can you also tell me if I get the choice to load Linux on drive E: and if I decide to remove SuSE can this be done without messing up Windows 2000?

 

[pweegar]

Sounds like you wrote over the Master Boot Record on your laptops C: drive. The best way to install a dual boot system is to:

1) Partiton your hd into at least 2 partions (or use 2 or more drives as you indicate you have).

2) Leave 1 partition/drive blank.

3) Install Wondows first

4)Install linux. When the install asks, choose the blank drive to install Linux to. Let linux partiton and format the blank partition/drive

You will then have a dual boot system. By default Linux will be your first bootable OS. You may want to change this in the future if you find yourself still working in Windows more than linux.

 

[fdalmoro]

Hey moveit,

You have to stop thinking about your computer in drive C:, D:, E: terms if you want to eliminate confusion. Linux refers to the partitions differently. I suggest you read up on

http://www.icon.co.za/~psheer/book/index.html.gz

it explains the installation processe well and it will teach you the basics you need to get a dual boot system working right.

Without the basics it is very difficult to explain to you what to do.

As far as your problem, pweegar is right. The MBR has been overwritten or you overwrote the boot files on the Windows drive. If it's the MBR that is the problem you can boot a Windows 98 floppy and type fdisk /mbr to fix it. If you overwrote the boot files on the Windows drive, you will need to reinstall Windows then reinstall Linux.

Fernando