Windows 7 and Arch (GRUB problem)

Hello I'm a new user in Arch and almost new in linux (well i need to work at university with linux so i'm not such a newb). I was using Windows 7 for a while and i installed Arch linux for programming. Everything installed very well and i really like Arch linux. But there is one problem, when GRUB boots i can choose between Arch and Windows and while i boot Arch everything is Ok, but the problem is when i boot Windows and it disables my GRUB (GRUB is installed in boot partition 200mb) well not disables, but just takes of Boot option (flag?) from boot partition and GRUB doesn't loads. so all the time after Windows usage i must run cfdisk and make boot partition bootable and remove root from windows.
Maybe anyone knos how to solve this problem or they have encountered such problem and fixed it.
If u need any code from GRUB say i will post it later, now i need to finish program in Windows.
P.S. i have surfed/serached forum for few days about such problem and found nothing... (maybe i'm blind?)

Firstly, normal people (atleast those i have communicated) don't critisize for grammar mistakes because everyone makes such mistakes. Second i prefer my mother langue more than other and i don't even bothered to learn english like i learned lithuanian langue.
Secondly, yeah if you would read news about computing and etc. you should know that there isn't full windows 7 there is windows 7 BETA, well i personally just forgot that work(mistake maybe? or i prefer not to say beta words with programm because i work mostly with beta programms).
And yeah Windows 7 was first installed (doh, if you would think more that fact would be clear because i wrote "I WAS using Windos 7 for a while..."

Similar Messages

Dual Booting Windows and Arch (SOLVED!)

Hello all, I'm having trouble getting a windows partition activated again. (Windows was on here for many years, then I installed arch on a separate partition.)
Here is the layout of fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 7833 62918541 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 7834 12039 33784695 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 12040 12161 979965 82 Linux swap / Solaris
sda1 is the windows partition, and sda2 is the arch partition. The linux partition SHOULD be primary bootable (have the * next to it),but all my attempts to do this have failed. (I've used "testdisk" to change the flags, but for some reason it keeps reverting back to setting sda 1 as primary bootable after a reboot or 2).
This is the pertinent section of /boot/grub/menu.lst:
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/f3be3baa-3b62-460c-8801-64b0b1cca$
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux Fallback
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/f3be3baa-3b62-460c-8801-64b0b1cca$
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
# (1) Windows
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
I have a . . . modified . . . copy of XP Professional, which comes with a recovery console to reinstall the MBR if it's necessary.
From what I've researched, I somehow need to reinstall grub to the second partition, make the second partition primary bootable, then rewrite the MBR on the first partition, and correct any command errors in menu.lst, but I haven't really figure out a way to do it.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Last edited by mongoose088 (2008-12-20 21:48:18)

I read up on some documentation of installing GRUB to the MBR.
So far, I went into ArchLive (from the cd) and did the following
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)
The installation reports success with no errors, but the problem persists. Arch linux will boot fine, but when I select XP it flashes my configuration, like so:
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
then kicks me back to the OS select GRUB screen. Did I install it to the wrong place?
EDIT:
I decided to issue this command:
grub> setup(hd0,1)
It reported some errors, then arch couldn't mount the ntfs partition because of possible MFT cluster errors.
Using testdisk, I repaired the boot sector and MFT clusters, then using ArchLive reinstalled grub with grub>(hd0)
Arch and Arch Fallback will boot correctly, but now the windows side shows an error:
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
Loading stage2Read Error (or something to this extent)
I wonder if this error brings me closer or farther to a solution?
Thanks for the replies so far!
Last edited by mongoose088 (2008-12-20 05:41:43)

Question about the "Windows and Arch Dual Boot" wiki

I've been reading this wiki http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Win … _Dual_Boot to get a better understanding of what I need to do to install Arch along side of my XP installation and there's one point that I don't understand. Here it is
It is important to note that there is a 1024 cylinder limit with some older BIOSs. This means that the BIOS cannot access things beyond the 1024th cylinder (about 8.5GB), so the /boot partition should be in the first 8.5GB (space before Windows partition).
How does one go about getting the /boot partition created during the installation of Arch to install in the first 8.5g? I have installed Arch in Virtualbox twice so far just so that I'm familiar with the procedure and I can't see anything in the installation where I can do this.
There's one other item that is not clear to me as I've seen conflicting information on it. If I do create a seperate "/boot" partition for Arch, do I need to make it "bootable"during the installation? At this point I don't think that I do.
My understanding of installing to be able to dual boot is that I only need to install Grub to "Sda" and of course edit the grub menu to add the information needed for XP. Is this enough?
Thanks for any help.

Yes, you install grub to sda (master boot record), and add the entry for Windows. In the step where you partition the harddrive, you can choose where to create it. Actually it may not be that much of a problem anymore, my boot is on the third partition, after ~15 GB. You can forget about the bootable flag when using grub, it does not care.

[SOLVED] Access media from both Windows and Arch?

I'm hoping to get a new laptop around summer time, allowing me to sort any niggles out before I start uni in september. I've been using Arch Linux for a while, and really like it now - it totally stopped by habit of distro-hopping anyway
However, I'm taking Computer Science, and think that it could be beneficial if I had a Windows partition on this new laptop, aswell as an Arch partition. The main problem with this is - How could I set this up, so that my media is kept on a partition of it's own, which could be accessed by both the Windows partition AND the linux partition? Is my only option to use NTFS? Or should I try Ext3, with one an ext3 driver in Windows? Or is there an even better solution?
Thanks,
Pritchard92
Last edited by pritchard92 (2010-03-04 00:17:55)

Well, I think I trust Linux a lot more than Windows, in terms of data integrity (...) That way, Windows can perform any filesystem checks
Aren't you contradicting yourself here?
Since NTFS write support is considered stable, I think it is the best choice as long as you don't need permission control (which only partially works with NTFS).
Make sure you're using the "ntfs-3g" driver since there is still the old "ntfs" driver around which does not have write support.
Last edited by Vortex375 (2010-03-03 23:36:54)

A little help with installing Windows and configuring GRUB

I want to install Windows XP on my machine for various reasons. As I am writing this I am using an existing Archlinux. Now I wonder what I should take care of considering GRUB when installing Windows.
I know that Windows likes to mess with the MBR and as I am not too proficient with such things I want to be careful.
Alright, now I put in the Windows installation CD, choose a fitting partition and let it install. I assume that afterwards my GRUB will be gone... How do I take care of this?

After windows has finished installing, re-insert you arch install cd and boot from it.
Mount your arch Installation as below
mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
- change sdX for your arch / partition, also mount /boot if you have a seperate /boot partition.
start the installer, and then just do the grub stage of the install again
or issue the command
grub-install /dev/sdX --root-directory=/mnt
Last edited by gazj (2008-02-25 14:43:26)

Trial (grammatical number) booting into FreeBSD with Windows and Arch

This is my output for `fdisk -l`:
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 335549655 419441084 41945715 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 63 335549654 167774796 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 419441085 494946143 37752529+ a5 FreeBSD
/dev/sda4 494946585 625137344 65095380 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 494946648 616590764 60822058+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6 616590828 625137344 4273258+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
I have Arch installed in `/dev/sda2` and Windows on `/dev/sda1`. Also, GRUB is installed in MBR and `/boot` is on `/dev/sda2`. This is what I wish to do: Install FreeBSD in `/dev/sda3`, but boot from the current instance of GRUB. This is an entry I made in GRUB:
title FreeBSD 8.2
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/loader
but it seems that GRUB didn't take nicely to UFS. So, I guess I must use chainloading over here? Exactly how do you suggest I go about it?
NOTE: I chose to not install any bootloader during the FreeBSD installation. Also, a question I might as well squeeze in here: Can I share `/dev/sda6` as swap for both Arch and FreeBSD. I've read people saying that it must be in the BSD slice and all. Don't know much about it.. totally new to FreeBSD.

The FreeBSD doesn't work like Linux with partitions, BSD partition is divided in slices, so you can't boot it like you mention. At my computer I have this in menu.lst:
# (2) FreeBSD
title FreeBSD
root (hd0,a)
kernel /boot/loader
If you want to read some more: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/dis … ation.html
And just in case you want to see it, my fdisk -l:
Urządzenie Rozruch Początek Koniec Bloków ID System
/dev/sda1 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 206848 106497215 53145184 a5 FreeBSD
/dev/sda3 106498048 536578047 215040000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 * 536578048 976768064 220095008+ 5 Rozszerzona
/dev/sda5 731896381 917655975 92879797+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 917656039 976768064 29556013 83 Linux
BTW "Rozszerzona" means "Extended" ;]
Last edited by Gooru (2011-09-04 12:36:09)

Safari 5 don't print jpg images in Windows and prints with problems in Mac

Hi All,
When I try to print images in Safari (Windows) it will print blank page.
This is sample source:
<html lang="en-US">
<body>
<im g src="http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/4651/wefwefwe.jpg">
</body>
</html>
This is ok in Mac.
Also in Mac When I'm printing image in Landscape it print image in 2 pages.
Image really fits in landscape mode and there is no need for second page.
I thought that the problem is margins..., but changing them do smaller values doesn't help.
Can someone help out?

Hi, I also have the same problem that cannot print preview on .jpg image.
When I try to change image to .png , it work.
It's this safari5 bug?

Window and tab safari problems

I updated Adobe flash player and it automatically updated safari as well without even asking me. Now when I highlight and click on a link there is no longer an "open link in new tab" option. I have gone into the safari preferences and tried to fix it under the tabs section but when I do that links only open in new tabs and not windows when you select the "open link in new window" option. Is there any way to fix this?

While we all have MacBooks in this forum not all of us use Safari. Many of us use Firefox or Chrome. There's a Safari Support Community where everybody uses Safari. You should also post this question there to increase your chances of getting an answer. https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/safari

[Solved] Windows 7 and Arch Dual boot- unable to boot into Windows7

Had to reformat computer and reinstall windows and Arch on two separate hard drives (Dual boot) .
Windows 7 was the first install on SDA: (/dev/sda1 - system reserved 100mb, /dev/sda2 - 20gb)
Arch on SDB: (/dev/sdb1- boot 94mb, /dev/sdb2- swap, /dev/sdb3 - root, /dev/sdb4 - /home)
Installed grub2 on /dev/sda. now grub bootloader loads Arch fine. Also shows Windows 7 (on /dev/sda1).
But when chosen Windows 7, it does not load and loops back again to boot loader screen.
In BIOS i have set disk drive SDB as first boot option.
If i choose SDA as first boot option in BIOS, same scenario is repeated.
I have gone through mostly all the pages related to the topic but i can not co-relate the solution
to my exact situation due to limited knowledge.
Can somebody pls help me as to how to edit grub.cfg so as to point it to load windows 7?
the entry related to windows 7 reads as follows:-
quote
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
menuentry 'Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)' --class windows --class os $menue$
insmod part_msdos
insmod ntfs
set root='hd0,msdos1'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,msdos1 --hint$
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root F010D97410D941F0
fi
chainloader +1
unquote
for Arch set root value is hd1,msdos1 and working fine.
Thanks and regards.
Last edited by commsanjay (2012-10-14 08:08:54)

This is exactly why I have chosen to use windows MBR and syslinux
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi … oot-loader
Last edited by ackt1c (2012-10-14 02:32:55)

Dual Boot Vista and Arch

Hey, I am attempting to set up my laptop to dual boot Windows Vista and Arch Linux.
The problem I'm having is after installing Arch my laptop still boots windows w/o going to the grub
I started with having Windows Vista installed on the laptop, and then shrank down the partition with vista by 30 gigs for Arch.
I was following the Arch setup guide in the wiki along with the Dual Boot Windows and Arch guide in the wiki [wiki]Windows_and_Arch_Dual_Boot[/wiki].
My partitioning Scheme is:
/dev/sda1 1.46 gb (some sort of toshiba recovery partition I believe)
/dev/sda2 117.8 gb (Vista Partition)
/dev/sda3 1 gb (Swap partition)
/dev/sda4 29 gb /root partition
According to the Dual Boot wiki article, I should install the grub to /boot, which in my case is in /root which I did.
The thing that confuses me about this is if I install the grub to /boot how do I get the grub to boot before the windows MBR?
Thanks in advanced

Mclarenf1905 wrote:
Hey, I am attempting to set up my laptop to dual boot Windows Vista and Arch Linux.
The problem I'm having is after installing Arch my laptop still boots windows w/o going to the grub
I started with having Windows Vista installed on the laptop, and then shrank down the partition with vista by 30 gigs for Arch.
I was following the Arch setup guide in the wiki along with the Dual Boot Windows and Arch guide in the wiki [wiki]Windows_and_Arch_Dual_Boot[/wiki].
My partitioning Scheme is:
/dev/sda1 1.46 gb (some sort of toshiba recovery partition I believe)
/dev/sda2 117.8 gb (Vista Partition)
/dev/sda3 1 gb (Swap partition)
/dev/sda4 29 gb /root partition
According to the Dual Boot wiki article, I should install the grub to /boot, which in my case is in /root which I did.
The thing that confuses me about this is if I install the grub to /boot how do I get the grub to boot before the windows MBR?
Thanks in advanced
It still works fine. It doesn't matter if its not in root directory. Others linux OSes have their bootloaders in the same directory and it manages to boot just fine.

Dual boot Windows 7 (64) and Arch Linux (64) problems

Hello:
I am new to Arch Linux and just finished installing the 64bit on my laptop. It had a prebuilt Windows 7 (64) installed which I kept but split the hdd from 160Gb to 80Gb and 80Gb. I installed Arch there and set 4 partitions, all of them as Logical - a 64 MB ext2 /boot partition; a 512 MB swap partition; a 15 GB root partition; and the rest as my /home partition. My partitions look like this:
Disk Drive: /dev/sda
Size: 160041885696 bytes, 160.0 GB
Heads: 255 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 19457
Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
sda1 Primary Unknown (27) 12889.02
sda2 Boot Primary NTFS 106.93
sda3 Primary NTFS [] 73915.11*
sda5 Logical Linux ext2 65.81*
sda6 Logical Linux 509.97*
sda7 Logical Linux ext2 15002.92*
sda8 Logical Linux ext2 57549.55*
The install was succesful(this was running from the core install cd) and I installed GRUB to my /boot but when I restarted it loaded Windows 7. I have used Knoppix USB disc to boot and see my Arch Linux install files and edited the /boot/gur/menu.lst file.
In Windows I installed EasyBCD 1.7.2 and tried to get NeoGrub bootloader working as a dual boot. I tried getting rid of the boot flag for Windows with cfdisk and setting it to my (Logical) sda5. That did not work. So far the only way I have booted into my Arch Linux install has been by going to the Live CD, choosing "Boot from Existing Linux Install" and editing the command files there.
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /kernel26.img
My goal is to get a dual boot working for Windows 7 and Arch Linux 64 and continue installing the Xorg and KDE to Arch. I just don't know what the problem is here. I don't mind reinstalling Arch if something went wrong, but I would like to keep my Windows running in order and add Arch on.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I ran the LiveCD and chose "Install to MBR hd0". I ended up with this:
setup hd(0,1)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists.....yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/iso9660_stage1_5" exists.....yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/iso9660_stage1_5 (hd0,1)".....failed(this is not fatal)
Running "embed /boot/grub/iso9660_stage1_5 (hd16)".....failed(this is not fatal)
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 d (hd0,1) /boot/grub/stage2 p (hd0,1) boot/grub/menu.lst".....failed
Error 31: File is not sector aligned
My entry for Windows into the menu.lst looks like this:
# (0) Arch Linux x64
title Arch Linux x64
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/3841273c-d91e-41d6-9dbf-716a15d03a01 ro
initrd /kernel26.img
# (1) Arch Linux x64
title Arch Linux x64 Fallback
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/3841273c-d91e-41d6-9dbf-716a15d03a01 ro
initrd /kernel26-fallback.img
# (2) Windows 7
title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Dual boot Arch / Windows 8 with grub, uefi and gpt

hi,
(my aplogies for my bad english)
after a fresh installation without worries I have one last problem : starting w8
Partitions :
[root@ToshCM christian]# gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.7
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 1465149168 sectors, 698.6 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): BAE3660C-FC6F-11E1-9C45-C6B1BB081CD7
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1465149134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 3757 sectors (1.8 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 923647 450.0 MiB 2700 Basic data partition
2 923648 1456127 260.0 MiB EF00 Basic data partition
3 1456128 1718271 128.0 MiB 0C01 Basic data partition
4 1718272 1230518271 585.9 GiB 0700 Basic data partition
5 1445343232 1465147391 9.4 GiB 2700 Basic data partition
6 1230518272 1250998271 9.8 GiB 8200
7 1250998272 1291958271 19.5 GiB 8300
8 1291958272 1445343231 73.1 GiB 8300
2 = efi (fat32)
4 = Windows (ntfs)
6 = swap
7 = /
8 = /home
EFI partition is mounted in /boot/efi
[root@ToshCM christian]# grep efi /etc/fstab
UUID=7CD3-EE8E /boot/efi vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 2
For now I have a grub that works perfectly without Windows
Now I try to follow this page
[root@ToshCM christian]# grub-probe --target=fs_uuid /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
7CD3-EE8E
[root@ToshCM christian]# grub-probe --target=hints_string /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
--hint-bios=hd0,gpt2 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt2 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt2
I put the result in /etc//grub.d/40_custom
[root@ToshCM christian]# cat /etc/grub.d/40_custom
#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Microsoft Windows Vista/7/8 x86_64 UEFI-GPT" {
insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
insmod search_fs_uuid
insmod chain
search --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt2 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt2 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt2 7CD3-EE8E
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
I regenerates grub.cfg
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
I check the result in /boot/grub/grub.cfg
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Microsoft Windows Vista/7/8 x86_64 UEFI-GPT" {
insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
insmod search_fs_uuid
insmod chain
search --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt2 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt2 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt2 7CD3-EE8E
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
After reboot I can see a fine line with Windows but it has no effect, neither start nor error message
The computer is a Toshiba Satellite C855-1TM
In the BIOS Advanced page "Boot Mode" is [UEFI Boot]
In the Security page "Secure Boot" is [Disabled]
Thanks in advance

vintherine wrote:
the.ridikulus.rat wrote:
@vintherine: Everything you mentioned in the 1st post is correct. In your case the correct commands should be:
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=arch_grub --recheck
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Thanks. I've tried that, get now a single line with Windows, which does not work
EDIT: Are you able to boot Windows independent of GRUB, ie. directly from the firmware boot menu?
I've tried F12 key, found a menu, started on the HD, found a new menu corresponding with the EFI directories (arch_grub, Microsoft....). Microsoft entry sent me on... grub menu
EDIT: Can you try (note the extra line : "set gfxpayload=keep")
It's time for diner (i'm in France). I'll see this in the next hour.
Many thanks
Seems like the actual Windows bootmgfw.efi was overwritten by grubx64.efi or something else. In the boot menu Windows's entry (created by Windows installer) is usually titled "Windows Boot Manager".
EDIT:
Try this. Copy the files from Windows's C:\Windows\Boot\EFI to <EFISYS>/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/ . Overwrite any exisitng files, and make sure <EFISYS>/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/BCD file exists. That is the Windows equivalent of grub.cfg (although BCD cannot be read easily since it is not a text file). Try your menuentry again.
Last edited by the.ridikulus.rat (2013-09-27 18:29:09)

How to dual boot with Windows 8.1 and Arch?

Hello everyone,
I've been looking into using Linux as my daily driver since having some experience with it on a server. After some digging around, I think Arch Linux is the best distro for me, now onto where I am.
I'm currently running Windows 8.1 (updated from Windows 8, which updated from Windows 7) on a Dell Inspiron 15R SE laptop, I want to dual boot Arch Linux with it. I've looked at the wiki and I'm still not entirely sure what to do.
Can anyone give me a quick list of steps of what to do to dual boot this? I've dual booted Ubuntu in the past and it was really simple because an installer did it all.
Thanks, Expi.

stqn wrote:
Expi1 wrote:Thanks, I'm mostly struggling with how to partition for Arch and then how to do the bootloader. I'm using Win8 64-bit and from what I understand a Legacy BIOS bootloader. I'm not entirely sure what I should be partitioning the C: into, I've done partitions before, just not for Arch and then I'm not sure whether to use GRUB or syslinux, or if I even need those. Or if I need to use GPT or MBR?
Your disk is already partitionned so you don’t have to choose between GPT or MBR, the choice is already made.
You don’t partition “C:”, that is the name of a Windows partition. You partition a drive.
Grub or syslinux, use whatever the beginners guide tells you to. Personally I think syslinux is simpler which is why I’m using it (but I’m not dual-booting, if that matters).
You’re not saying what your problem is with partitionning, so it’s hard to help.
Thanks for getting back to me, I'm not sure if I just create one large partition for Archlinux or if I have to create multiple? Where I'm also confused is with the Creating Filesystems part of the guide. I don't understand how I'd do this in Windows, or what /dev/sda1 is referring to.
As for the bootloader part, the Beginner's Guide gives you a choice between syslinux and grub, what I'm not sure about is which to use considering I'm dualbooting. How it will affect my windows bootloader, do I disregard that and use GRUB now? I'm unclear on how that works.
I'm also aware I need to disable Secure Boot, I just searched my BIOS options and couldn't find anything remotely relating to that, so I'm assuming it's not an issue since this computer was originally on Windows 7 anyway?
Thanks again, Expi.
Last edited by Expi1 (2014-03-06 19:54:30)

Dual boot Windows 7 and Arch from 2 seperate drives (UEFI)

Hello everyone, I've been working on installing Arch to a secondary hard drive for the past few hours, but I am trying to make sure I won't mess up my Windows 7 install. I have found several topics talking about dual booting Windows 7 and Arch, but not a whole lot on booting them from separate drives. My drives are currently setup as follows.
sda (120GB SSD for Windows 7)
sda1 (100MB System Reserved NTFS partition)
sda2 (Windows 7 install)
sdb (1TB HDD for Windows programs, files, etc)
sdb1 (1TB NTFS partition)
sdc (1TB HDD)
sdc1 (boot 512MB FAT32)
sdc2 (root 500MB ext4)
sdc3 (home 300GB ext4)
sdc4 (swap 10GB)
rest unallocated "free space"
I used Gparted to create the partitions. I ended up getting hung up on the "Create Filesystems" sections, specifically this line"
# mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sdXY
Now that I am looking at it, I'm thinking the "Create Filesystems" section maybe isn't necessary because I've used Gparted?
If it isn't necessary, when I get to the "mount the EFI System Partition to /boot" section, would I simply use
# mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/boot
instead of
# mount /dev/sdXY /mnt/boot ?
The way I had this setup with Ubuntu was 3 partitions on sdc (/, home, swap) and I set my PC to boot to the sdc drive on startup. The boot loader would then give me the option to boot into Ubuntu or Windows 7, and I never had to alter the sda or sdb drives at all. Is this possible through Arch? My thinking is that even if it isn't, I should still be able to enter the BIOS boot menu and select which drive to boot manually correct? That wouldn't be too big of a deal for me because I spend 90% of my time in Linux, and only use Windows for Photoshop and gaming occasionally.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I would have just tested this out, but I am afraid of messing up my Windows install.

After several sleepless hours I had to give up and go to bed about 5 hours ago. The installation process went smoothly (or so I thought). I followed the tutorial closely and upon rebooting I was met with a blinking cursor. After some googling I found others who said I should press TAB, but nothing seemed to work.
I rebooted to the iso disk and found the "boot installed OS" option and noticed it said "Press TAB to edit". I then found the boot parameters and tried everything from hd0 0 to hd4 4. I believe I have Grub setup correctly because every option besides hd0 0 either says "Booting..." and then gets stuck, or says "That disk and partition combination does not exist". So yea, I think hd0 0 is the correct boot path, it just gets stuck with the blinking cursor.
silverhammermba wrote:
You have the right idea. You want to install a bootloader on sdc1 which will be able to boot both Arch and Windows.
Your best bet would be to use something like rEFInd. It has a "scanfor" option that should automatically detect your BIOS-configured Windows installation and add a boot option for it. Note that depending on your motherboard, you may have to switch to UEFI-only mode and Windows will be unbootable without the assistance of a UEFI program which is backwards compatible with BIOS (like rEFInd).
Thank you for the link. Considering I can't get into my install and the actual install only took about 30 minutes, I think I am going to just start from the beginning again with REFIndr. It seems much simpler. I only used Grub because I've used it before with Ubuntu, but my very limited knowledge is telling me Grub is probably the problem.
MoonSwan wrote:Just an idea: My bios has a "Boot-up Prompt" which I can invoke when it's POSTing by hitting F11. This brings me to a menu that allows me to choose which drive I want to boot up that day. I use it when Syslinux isn't working properly (Which is right now as a matter of fact ...) in order to boot Windows so I can do some SCII, for example. I, too, dual-boot but I have both OSes on different SSDs. So my 120GB Crucial SSD has Arch on it and the 240GB Kingston has Windows, SCII, Portable Apps, etc and nary the two shall meet. It makes dual-booting easier in the case of a corrupt OS or MBR or what-have-you. You may want to give your Bios a better look to see if you can do the F11 trick. It probably can and will usually tell you so at POST by printing that information on-screen along with your drives-detected and other messages (I hit Pause sometimes to read all the POST messages).
This is exactly what I was talking about doing when I mentioned:
My thinking is that even if it isn't, I should still be able to enter the BIOS boot menu and select which drive to boot manually correct?
That's good to know, because even if this next install doesn't work I think if I pull the other drives I should be able to get it working fairly easily.
Thanks again everyone.

Dual booting win 7 and arch: cannot install grub to partition

I have read the arch wiki page on dual booting and several other sources on line, but I am still struggling to get this to work.
I am trying to dual boot arch and windows 7 on my lenovo ideapad s205. the machine comes with windows 7 pre-installed.
I shrank the win 7 partition and added an extended partition with 3 logical partions for /boot, swap, and /.
I am able to install and run arch by installing grub to the mbr. when I do this, though, I cannot boot windows. (the windows section of grub menu.lst is uncommented and points toward hda0,0. I have tried hda 0,1 as well).
I have also tried to use the windows boot loader to load arch, as described in the arch wiki page on dual booting. The problem here is that, taking this approach, I should install grub to my /boot partition, but when I try to do this, the installer only allows me to install grub to sda or sdb (the usb stick).
I have read that grub should be able to boot linux from a logical partition. Is this so?
Is there something wrong with the arch installer that it is not giving me the option of installing to a partition rather than the mbr, or is this a problem with my partition scheme, or something else?
I am tempted to remove lenovo's recovery system, but on the other hand, I have already needed to use it several times while monkeying around with installing arch.
Thanks for any help.
UPDATE:
I now have the laptop dual-booting win 7 and arch. My solution ( adapted from here: http://helms-deep.cable.nu/~rwh/blog/?p=177) was to:
1. installed arch on the partitions I had created for it, but skipped the "install bootloader" stage.
2. in win 7, I downloaded and installed EasyBCD and made an entry for arch in it. I checked the option to "Use EasyBCD's copy of GRUB"
3. When I restarted, I got a grub error because the entry in grub's menu.lst was pointing at the wrong partitions for the kernel and root.
4. So I went back into the arch live disk, mounted the boot partition and edited menu.lst.
Now when I start the laptop, the windows boot loader starts and I can choose between win 7 and arch. when I select arch, grub4dos starts and gives me the option to start arch. this is not particularly elegant (nor is it fast), so I think this solution is less than ideal, but it does work.
I'd be interestd in any thoughts about what went wrong and what a better solution would be.
thanks.
Last edited by ratchet (2011-10-10 19:09:16)

ratchet wrote:II am able to install and run arch by installing grub to the mbr. when I do this, though, I cannot boot windows. (the windows section of grub menu.lst is uncommented and points toward hda0,0. I have tried hda 0,1 as well).
Is this a typo in your post or how it was in menu.lst? Surely it should be hd0,0 and not hda0,0? The entry I have in my menu.lst is as follows:
# (2) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
What was yours?
Last edited by JHeaton (2011-10-10 20:18:22)

Windows 7 and Arch (GRUB problem)

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