I've been happily dualbooting with SuSE 9.1 and XP Pro using GRUB. I had an extra partition, so I decided to test out Vista. I knew full well that MS doesn't play nice with other OSs, but I figured I could go in and fix it myself.

I attempted to boot with a 9.1 CD-ROM, but the boot process blew right by the CD and went into the Win bootloader (which looks like two loaders, one after the other). Checking the BIOS, I confirmed that CD-ROM was first in the boot order. Other CD-ROMS (such as the XP install disk or my Acronis True Image boot CD) DO boot as they should.

I then used the 9.1 install CD #1 to make a set of boot floppies, using rawrite, which came on the CD. Booting to the floppies, I get an error message saying "I'm SUSE Linux module disk 1. I cannot boot. :-(" (yes, the frowny was in the message!).

Is there a way I gen get all three OSs to play nicely? Would I be able to go in and repair GRUB using SuSE 8.2 or Knoppix? Any idvice with the weird double bootloader Windows has come up with?

Thanks!

I found that any windows would eat my grub/lilo and occasionally my linux. So, yes, using a boot floppy or bootable CD (such as knoppix, knoppix is good) you should be able to go in and fix grub.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

hope this helps

EDIT:
since vista isn't out yet, it is still potentially unstable (ok, so any windows is potentially unstable, but we won't go into that)

rescue floppies:
http://www.toms.net/rb/

titanium_geek

Thanks a million! I booted Knoppix, was able to install GRUB into the MBR, and I'm happily triple-booting!