Have you tried my reply with heading?

Don't be silly.

Is the instruction not enough?

Can you find Konquerer?
Can you find the little direction arrows near the top?
Can tou use them to migrate to the "/" directory of Suse filing tree system?
Can you not then click /boot and the /grub?
Can you not use either Kwrite or Kate to open the text files?

Please confirm

i found command.com in media:/hda4/windows/C

i could do all of the above

You said

i found command.com in media:/hda4/windows/C

Are you sure because your hda4 is a Linux partition type 83 as indicated earlier!

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 243 1951866 1b Hidden W95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 * 244 3345 24912896+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda3 5942 9729 30427110 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda4 3346 5941 20852370 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 5942 9729 30427078+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

hda1 has cylinder 1 to 243 and the number blocks suggests it is about 2Gb, a size possibly only good for Windows 98 or a temporary backup device for XP's system data.

hda2 has 244 to 3345 cylinders and has a szie of 25Gb and that looks like a XP to me.

Your partition table is strange to me because I can't find a swap partition there. I also can't understand how your hda4 is separated by hda3 in position wise as hda4 is consecutive to hda2 with cylinder 3346 to 5941. Its size is 20Gb. Suse's footprint in aninstallation is only about 2.5Gb.

Your hda3 is the extended partition bordering the cylinder from the end of hda4's 5942 to 9729, with a size of 30Gb. You have created hda5 and let it used all the space. Thus your hda5 has cylinder number matching closely to the extended partition hda3.

For accurate partitioning information always use

fdisk -l

The cfdisk /dev/hda will show a complete run down too.

According to my assessment you should have a hidden boot.ini file in hda2, visible by Suse, and indicative of it being a XP system.

I need confirmation on hda1 to see if it has command.com or \Windows directory.

XP normally wants to claim hda1 to exclude others into the hdd. It appears to me you XP has to go through hda1 in order to boot. I can handle that if hda1 is a bootable system, as I have a Win2k, which uses the same NTLRD bootloader as XP, in a hdg3.

Just let me know the situation of hda1 so taht I could advise futher.

there is a command.com in media:/hda1

in fact the content of media:/hda4/windows/C and media:/hda1is identical

OK let's see if you can boot either of them this way

First try to edit the boot.ini in hda2. There should be a line with

timeout=1

where 1 is just an example to indicate the time in seconds for xp to boot to the deault system (itself) if the user does'n't choose from the menu in that period. by edit the number after timeout= will allow you to see the booting screen. I would just add a couple of zero. You can still boot immediately by pressing the return key.

Thereafter replace the previouse scheme of

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Microsoft Windows XP
unhide (hd0,0)
unhide (hd0,1)
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1


with

# booting hda1 by unhiding it, no need to bother hda2 as it is 2nd in the booting queue and should come up as a "D" drive
title a windows that I am not aware of
unhide (hd0)
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

# booting hda2 XP, havve to hide the partition ahead of it so as to boot to "C"
title This is 25Gb hda2 believed to be a XP
hide (hd0,0)
unhide (hd0,1)
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

and report

title a windows that I am not aware of

result

unhide hda0
error 30, invaild argument


# booting hda2 XP, havve to hide the partition ahead of it so as to boot to "C"
title This is 25Gb hda2 believed to be a XP

resulte:

command.com problem is gone instead
it cite

<windows root>\system32\hal.dlll is missing or currupt

First result

Please compare the line I supplied and the line you type. You put in hda0 when I asked (hd0,0). You should be able to read hda1 in Linux is (hd0,0) in Grub.

So try again

Second result

This partition needs a command.com and could have got it from hda1. This would suggest you XP has to be booted from hda1 and so repair the /boot/grub/ menu.lst to see what can be achieved by booting the hda1

i fixed menu.lst and reboot on "title This is 25Gb hda2 believed to be a XP"

the response was

recoverry not finish

It is more less of what I expect. I now advise to restore the XP's MBR.
The steps are

(1) Use your Suse to take a look at hda2 to ensure the following files are there
boot.ini
ntldr
ntdetect
msdos.sys and
io.sys

I just checked mine. XP does not need Command.com. If the above are there proceed to next step, otherwise abort

(2) While in Suse hide the hda1 and unhide hda2 using Grub. You do this in the terminal mode as the "superuser" (su & password!). Just type

grub

This will get you talking to Grub the mother of all boot loaders. You then type

hide (hd0,0)
unhide (hd0,1)

Grub may tell you if it can't do as told.

(this is optional but if you want to be sure you can have a look at the partition table by typing

geometry (hd0)

Grub will list all your partitions in had disk (hd0), the first one should be type 0x1b and the second one must be 0xc, the number/letter after 0x should be exactly as you first reported.)

type quit to exit Grub

reboot with XP installation CD.

Wait until you are asked if you want to install new or repair. Choose repair and you should be in XP command prompt. Type

fixmbr

then exit, then reboot the system

You should be booting to XP again from this point onward. Suse can only be access by Suse's installation CD.

Report if you lose anything in XP.

If XP is OK then restore Suse and the problem should go away hopefully.

If the above doesn't work out you should start backing up all your belongings in hda1 and hda2 using Suse to write them out on a neutral partition like your hda5.

boot.ini
ntldr
ntdetect
msdos.sys and
io.sys

its all there

i will attemp

step two

it's such a shame I set up my multi-boot system a while ago, I had all the problems you have, and I've fixed them... :S But I don't know how

the following is that appeared in shell


GNU GRUB version 0.95 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> hide (hd0,0)

grub> unhide (hd0,1)

grub> geometry (hd0)
drive 0x80: C/H/S = 16383/255/63, The number of sectors = 156301488, /dev/hda
Partition num: 0, Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0x1b
Partition num: 1, Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xc
Partition num: 3, Filesystem type is reiserfs, partition type 0x83
Partition num: 4, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7

grub>

i only have a hardware vender recovery cd,
it support ms-dos

but fixmbr
was an unknown command to the msdos

do u know where can i get a disk that can boot with support to fixmbr

afaik fixmbr can only run from the windows xp disc... msdos also supported a similar command (it was some kind of option after the command "format"), but I don't know if this works with windows xp partitions...