Dual booting

[Fred Bloggs]

I can confirm that Ubuntu and OpenSuse install "out of the box" with grub boot loader. However, I have not yet found a way to go back to a single Windows OS (removing Grub and Linux) afterwards without reformatting and reinstalling Windows. Using a bootable USB device to test it out seems like a good idea to me.

 

[TheFaQQer]

I can confirm that Ubuntu and OpenSuse install "out of the box" with grub boot loader. However, I have not yet found a way to go back to a single Windows OS (removing Grub and Linux) afterwards without reformatting and reinstalling Windows. Using a bootable USB device to test it out seems like a good idea to me.

IIRC, you have to be a little bit careful with an USB drive.

If you don't put the boot loader on the hard drive (i.e. put everything on the USB drive), then you end up with a machine that can only boot when the external drive is plugged in!!

Sadly, I speak from experience

 

[Fred Bloggs]

IIRC, you have to be a little bit careful with an USB drive.

If you don't put the boot loader on the hard drive (i.e. put everything on the USB drive), then you end up with a machine that can only boot when the external drive is plugged in!!

Sadly, I speak from experience

Wow, that's a pitfall worth avoiding!

 

[pmeswani]

IIRC, you have to be a little bit careful with an USB drive.

If you don't put the boot loader on the hard drive (i.e. put everything on the USB drive), then you end up with a machine that can only boot when the external drive is plugged in!!

Sadly, I speak from experience

There must be a way of fixing that without reinstalling the OS?

 

[TheFaQQer]

There must be a way of fixing that without reinstalling the OS?

I'm sure there is.

Since my installation of eBusiness Suite failed on the unsupported version of SUSE I was using, I gave up and installed it on Windows instead.

 

[JoJoGabor]

I _think_ you can boot from the XP CD and perform a repair on your Install. Select to go to the cmd line and type help for a list of commands. Something like fixmbr and fixboot should fix it.

I haven't tested this - just something I remember from my past