Dual boot ArchLinux and Win XP on 2 separate HDD

Dear Archers
My friend wants me to install ArchLinux on his desktop, with 2 separate HDD. He already has win xp installed on one HDD. He wants to dual boot. Pl. give some inputs as to how this should be done.
(My experience is limited. I have installed ArchX86_64 only, on my desktop)
I have read the wiki, but I am not confident of doing this with only so little explanation

It should be pretty simple. Just install Arch on the HDD without XP on it, install grub to the Arch drive's MBR, then change the boot priority in the BIOS so that the Arch drive is booted first.
When you add your "windows" menu item to GRUB, the "root" entry should look like:
rootnoverify(hd1,0)
assuming XP is on the first paritition of the other drive.
Assuming you install GRUB to the correct drive, it should be harmless to play around with menu.lst until you get it working right.
Last edited by alexandrite (2010-08-24 14:24:39)

Similar Messages

Dual boot archlinux and "live"OS

Haven't heard nor seen a setup for normal OS and "live"OS on a single install device.
My system is x86_64 and recently I installed archlinux to a CF flash card of 16GB using only 8GB of its capacity.
Thus, it occured to me that I could utilize the remaining 8GB to install a "live" system which can cp2ram on a second partition. This would provide an operating arrangement utilizing CF card without constant read/writes as in a normal install since the OS would operate entirely in ram. Ability to utilize data from the archlinux 8GB partition would be possible by mounting that partition while in the "live" system.
I presently have two "live" systems on CF cards...FaunOS and CTKarchlive.
Each has a different boot arrangement, syslinux and grub.
Either system operates in cp2ram, FaunOS is larger in size and uses kde3.5. Ctkarchlinux (x86_64) is open box and has fewer packages. FaunOS is i686 and is not maintained but is useable and normally functions in a manner similar to Larch.
Since I have not seen a combo of this nature, I wonder if there is a reason it will not work with a single CF card install to two partitions.
The present 16GB install is mbr grub.
It would seem ideal for CF flash to be used in a cp2ram environment, giving ~60MB/s hdparm read speed with adata speedy 533x CF card 16GB during the cp2ram and idle afterwards. Long live the CF!
Thus, a single 16GB CF card would provide archlinux normal boot and a second "live" archlinux-based boot.
It would seem probable that the normal archlinux boot would eventually fail. Then the "live" partition could replace it with an up-to-date new install.
Alternatively, install a backup archlinux in the second partition.
Maybe I shouldn't do this? Gone bananas?

It should be pretty simple. Just install Arch on the HDD without XP on it, install grub to the Arch drive's MBR, then change the boot priority in the BIOS so that the Arch drive is booted first.
When you add your "windows" menu item to GRUB, the "root" entry should look like:
rootnoverify(hd1,0)
assuming XP is on the first paritition of the other drive.
Assuming you install GRUB to the correct drive, it should be harmless to play around with menu.lst until you get it working right.
Last edited by alexandrite (2010-08-24 14:24:39)

Dual boot ArchLinux and Windows 7

I've installed windows 7 on first partition of the disk.
Afterwards, I've installed Linux (GPT, RAID1, LVM, Syslinux) on the disk with problems but resolved now.
At the boot when Windows is choosen, a screen appeared with :
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be cause.
File \boot\BCD
Status : 0xc000000e
Info: An error occured while attempting to read the boot configuration dt
The syslinux.file contains :
LABEL windows
MENU LABEL Windows
COM32 chain.c32
APPEND hd0 1
I've tried also withous success.
LABEL windows
MENU LABEL Windows
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd0 1
I've read on the net that Windows is not compatible with GPT disk. Is there any workaround ?

Jo wrote:I've read on the net that Windows is not compatible with GPT disk. Is there any workaround ?
Not really.
You have two (three) choices. Either you change back to good old MBR. or you use use UEFI instead of bios and be happy with windows and GPT after a reinstall of windows. If you don't have UEFI, have fun with the setup of DUET
Last edited by progandy (2012-08-29 12:14:51)

[Success] Dual Booting Arch and Windows 7 [Advice / Confirmation]

So I have been trying to get Starcraft II to work with wine and no luck.
I have decided to install windows back on my computer, besides it might come in handy since I'm heading back to school soon.
Anyways I have tried dual booting arch and windows in the past, and my results have never been stable.
Today I will try using the program gparted.
Let me give you my thoughts on how I plan to go through this and please give me some advice so I don't loose everything I have worked for on my linux box
1.Currently I have two hard drives, one for all my main programs and one for my media files (mounting usb, dvd, etc, and it actually has no files in it xD).
I plan to use gparted to re-size my second harddrive (media drive), create an extended partition, and a logical ntfs partition within it.
2.I pop in my windows cd that I recieved with my laptop and install it on the space I have partitioned for windows.
3. If my grub gets wiped out my windows (which I hope it doesn't not sure how the MBR stuff works) I insert a Ubuntu live cd and do
sudo grub
> root (hd0,0)
> setup (hd0)
> exit
4.Configure grub to boot windows 7.
5.Be happy with no headache.
SO....
If someone with past experience with dual booting windows and arch could please give me some advice, as I do not want to lose all my data, start over, and have another headache.
I know I must learn to backup arch, which I will before september.
But if anyone has any protips, or sees a flaw in my plan please point it out!!!
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and even more if advice has been given to boost my confidence!
For now I will wait
Thank you fellow archies.
Last edited by Jabrick (2011-07-03 01:29:36)

satanselbow wrote:
1) Windows must be installed to a primary partition - attempting to install it to an logical partition will result in an epic fail
2) Physically disconnect the harddrive you do not want windows on as windows typically installs the bootloader on the 1st hardisk (ie /sda) regardless of installation drive (ie /sdb)
3 / 4) Complete the windows installation then reattached your Arch drive and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst (as root) pointing the W7 entry to (hd1,0) - no need to reinstall grub
5) Hey it's windows - anything could happen
If you create an NTFS partition right at the beginning of the the drive before you start the W7 install you can prevent it greedily using up 2 of you 4 primary partitions - I would also completely update you new W7 installation past SP1 before reattaching the other drive to further prevent W7 going mental
satanselbow thank you so much!
Everything works great I had no stumbles, and I hope no problems in the future!!
I will post exactly what I did in case someone has the same issue.
1. Partition you're secondary harddrive as primary ntfs with gparted
2. Reboot, and if you get a file system check error, check you're udev rules. (For my case in particular I had to change the udev rules I got for auto mounting usb, ext harddrive, etc.
3.Power off your computer and physically remove the harddrive that contains all your linux goodies
4. Plug in your windows cd and install in the partition you created
5. Update your windows OS
6. Plug in Ubuntu live CD and reboot
7. Use commands to get grub to overwrite the windows boot loader (In my case I put grub everyone hd0,0 hd0,1 just to be sure, but you might want to do things cleaner)
8. Reboot and see if grub loads up
9. Use Ubuntu live CD again and launch Gparted, select the boot to your extra linux space (if you had one, not sure if this is needed)
10. Plug in your linux harddrive and reconfigure /boot/grub/menu.lst and your good to go
Once again shout outs to satanselbow!!! For without him I might've failed brutally!
Cheers!

Dual booting Arch and Ubuntu

Hi, I would like to dual boot Arch and Ubuntu using GRUB2.
I already have Arch, set up as it's described in the Beginner's Guide, with GRUB2 installed. How would I go about dual booting Ubuntu, preferably without overwriting the existing bootloader?
I haven't tried anything yet, but the problem that I can see is resizing my /home; is this possible on the Ubuntu liveDVD? If not, would I be able to resize /home with my gParted liveCD?
Unfortunately, I have no backup media to use, so I wouldn't be able to transfer anything away as a backup.
Here is my partition table:
%lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 30G 0 part /
├─sda2 8:2 0 12G 0 part [SWAP]
├─sda3 8:3 0 5M 0 part
└─sda4 8:4 0 889.5G 0 part /home
sda1 is my root partition, sda2 is swap, sda3 is GRUB's boot partition, which I was told that I needed in the guide, and sda4 (/home) occupies the "rest of the disk".
I am using a GPT-partitioned drive, as I read this has many advantages and I do not plan to triple-boot Windows.
So, can someone tell me what I do if I want to dual boot Ubuntu? I'm very sorry if this should have been posted on the Ubuntu forums, but I'm just more familiar with Arch, and I already have it installed. Please ask if you need any other files like my fstab. I have my Ubuntu liveDVD, GParted live CD (and Arch CD) at hand.
Thanks in advance, rberyl.
(Also, does anyone else think it's a bit of a backwards thing to put the output of "date -u +%W$(uname)|sha256sum|sed 's/\W//g'" as a sign-up question? )
Last edited by rberyl (2012-12-29 11:45:23)

Hi rberyl,
You can change your partitions using an inbuilt tool like cfdisk, or if you'd prefer a GUI gparted can be installed from the Arch repos. This will allow you to shrink sda4, and set up the new partitions for your Ubuntu OS. Although this shouldn't cause any data loss, its best practice to back up just in case.
When installing Ubuntu, be sure to opt-out of bootloader creation. I think you have to use the alternate installation media to get this option. You can add your Ubuntu partition to the existing bootloader by running osprober (available from the repos) and then running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg . Alternatively, you can manually edit your GRUB config. See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … NU.2FLinux for instructions.
Good luck!
Last edited by smazza (2012-12-29 16:04:08)

Dual boot Windows and Linux?

I recently bought a T61, and will be taking a programming course. One prof I spoke with said they ask us to use Unix tools, so one option is to dual boot linux and Windows. I haven't decided yet whether I will keep Windows Ultimate, or go to XP for this. But I was wondering how easy/hard is it to make this work, and what kind of steps need to be taken? If you could point me towards any good tutorials/guides that would be appreciated too.
Also, I have never really used linux, so which version is best? I will be needing it for programming, but also still want to do the basics like web surfing, music, dvd's, burning discs, etc. I have an old copy of Ubuntu that I never used, but its probably about 4 years old. Is this still acceptable or will I need something newer?
Message Edited by amace on 05-29-2008 01:28 PM
T61 15.4" T9300 (2.5GHz 6MB L2) Windows 7 Professional x64 4GB Memory, NVidia Quadro NVS 140M

Hi,
If it's just a couple of programming courses that you are going to take I suggest you'd try out VMware player:
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
You can get this software for free and since your system packs a lot of punch it will be able to run it smoothly without any hassle. I'm an engineering grad student and I have to do alot of programming. I've used VMware player before to do some software developement in Ubuntu when I didn't have enough HD to install dual boot but still couldn't do all my other stuff without XP.
VMware Ubuntu will need a bit of fiddling to get it work just right (USB devices, etc) but it shouldn't be harder than installing a dual boot (actually it is alot easier for my opinion). The only down side is that file sharing between VMware and Windows can be somewhat difficult. I used an external USB drive to share my files but you could always set up Samba to handle file sharing.
I hope this helps out with your decision.

Dual Booting Windows and Solaris

Hi
how do i dual boot windows and solaris
Do i install windows first and then solaris or do it the other way around..?
how do i make sure that Windows and Solaris appear in my boot options..?
Is their a guide on doing this...?
Thanks
Liam

Hey I did a quick google search for you. So I havent tried this method myself but it sounds reasonable.
The text below is from the following link:
http://www.hccfl.edu/pollock/AUnix1/DualBoot.htm
"Solaris boot loader
Partition the drive to leave at least 2GB of space available for Solaris;
more drive space is desirable.
As with Linux, install Windows first then Solaris.
Do not use the Installation CD but boot and install
from Software CD 1.
If you accept the default partitioning scheme which
the installer provides you will soon run out of space in
your / and /usr partitions since only enough space is
allocated to install the system.
All extra space is allocated to /export/home.
A typical installation on a 4.5GB partition might look
something like this:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0d0s0 900M 536M 310M 64% /
/dev/dsk/c0d0s1 334M 109M 192M 36% /var
swap 671M 8.0k 671M 1% /var/run
swap 671M 8.0k 671M 1% /tmp
/dev/dsk/c0d0s5 845M 222M 565M 29% /opt
# (FAT32 partition):
/dev/dsk/c0d0p0:1 5.0G 3.3G 1.6G 66% /c
/dev/dsk/c0d0s7 1.1G 92M 954M 9% /export/home
/dev/dsk/c0d0s4 752M 225M 474M 33% /usr/local
The Solaris boot selector enables you to choose either
Solaris or Windows with Solaris as the default.
(I prefer grub or lilo!)
To mount FAT under Solaris:
# mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0d0p0:c /dos (or �:1�?)
And the vfstab file:
/dev/dsk/c0d0p0:c - /dos pcfs - yes -
To create a GRUB boot floppy, follow these steps:
$ mkfs -t ext2 /dev/fd0
$ mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/fd0
$ mkdir /mnt/fd0/boot /mnt/fd0/boot/grub
$ cp /boot/grub/stage[12] /boot/grub/grub.conf \
> /mnt/fd0/boot/grub
$ /sbin/grub --batch <
Hope this helps!
/Oscar

Dual Boot Windows7 and OSX on an HP 2140

I thought this was a great blog from networkjew.com about creating a Dual Boot Windows7 and OSX on an HP 2140.
Now that you’ve got your sleek little HP 2140 netbook, its time to blow away Windows XP and put something a bit snazzier on there. I’ve toyed with OSX86 previously, and knew that most of the netbooks out there support it in one way or another, and many of them quite well. I had also read that Windows 7 played very nicely on these tiny computers, and it’s free for a few months, so why not?
Here’s how I made it work – there may be better ways, but this worked for me, mostly:
HP Product Expert for the Officejet Pro X Series.
Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution!
See a great post? Give it a Kudos!

Windows 7 runs great on the 2140. I actually haven't had a chance to test all hardware functionality, but its nice and snappy; and as far as I can tell, all the hardware was recognized right out of the box. I loaded several of the Vista drivers/software from the HP support website and a few of them failed, but many installed just fine. I forgot to note which ones, unfortunately.
Great netbook.

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.

[SOS]Which mac mini device can install dual boot(Lion and Mt Lion)?

Salutations!
Due to my assignment, I need to get mac mini device which support dual boot.
Which mac mini device model/firmware can we install dual boot(Lion and Mt Lion) on it?
I got late 2012 one, but it looks like it does not support.
Please help me.
Thank you so much,
TriQuang

Hi Niel,
Thank you for your fast reply. So if I buy mac mini MC815 model, which comes with preinstalled Lion I can run dual boot(Lion and Mt Lion)?
I have one more question: Can I install Mac OS 10.6 on that mini device? If it's not supported which mac mini model can I get to support Snow Leopard and Lion and Mt Lion?
Thanks and best regards,
TriQuang

Pre-configured dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows

Of possible interest to the Linux folks: A newly opened Laptops with purpose store is now offering several popular ThinkPad models fully pre-configured with dual-boot Ubuntu Linux and Windows.
These systems come with a lot of pre-installed applications, see Dual boot Linux and Windows page for details.
At the moment, we are working on specific solutions for students, educators, scientists, designers...
Would love to have some feedback from the community on the existing offerings as well as suggestions/wishes for the future ones.

That would be fine if some hp machines didn't have broken UEFI that don't respect setting the default OS.

Dual Boot XP and Vista (L305-S5944)

I have got XP Pro on it and Vista which came installed... and used the VistaBootPro on the computer to choose between the two... but when I loaded that up it will now nolonger load XP. It said that i need a NTLDR file well i fixed that and now right when it starts to load XP it flashes the BLUE SCREEN not even a full second then reboots... I am lost now....
PLEASE HELP>>>

Satellite L305-S5944
Maybe you should begin again.
How to dual boot Vista and XP (with Vista installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshot...
-Jerry

Win XP/Win 7 dual boot question and

My replacement motherboard for my crapped out Dell one that was a replacement, crapped out the other week and it was tested with a new power supply to no avail. it was also tested in a shortcut, (connecting the two wires directly, the two that "short out" that turns on the power) and that didnt work either.. (something like that)
My options are:
buy another replacment motherboard and hope it stays working longer than the six months the other did
Buy a new computer and use my old hard drive
thus arising this question:
since the new computer will have Windows 7 on it, can I use that as a slave drive and use my primary drive (not going to loose my data and stuff) I have the primary drive as XP but the new one will use 7, when I put in the win 7 drive as a slave drive, will it boot to 7 or XP and would I have the option to dual boot, even if they are seperate drives..
I think I am writing it a confusing way but I hope you can understand what I am getting at....
Simply put--
I have XP drive
I buy new computer it has Win 7 drive
Xp drive becomes master, win 7 becomes slave
Will XP boot or Win 7 boot when its set as the slave drive? what about XP/7 dual boot? they are on seperate drives, will it let me dual boot?
I want my XP drive to boot.
I hope you can understand that..
If I can, I would like to reformat the win7 drive and just use that for storage. is that possioble?
Ethan
I just want some help or even an opinion, is that so hard to ask for?

Okay I read through your post a few times and I am still a bit confused about what your setup looks like. I am going to assume you bought a new computer with Windows 7 on it thus you DID NOT replace the motherboard on the old one. With that assumption, then your answer would be no, only Windows 7 would boot (and it might have some problems if you have it set as the slave drive). Windows XP from your old hard drive would not boot because simply put, the BIOS will not detect a proper boot.ini file and the hardware configuration (partitions and/or disk types) does not match up.
If you want to set up a dual boot, you would have to install the secondary hard drive (or partition the primary one) and perform a destructive OS restore on it AND find the drivers for it (if the manufacturer of the computer even supports it). When I used to work for the Geek Squad, numerous clients asked about this and the general consensus was that the Geek Squad strongly opposed it because of the drivers. Being that XP and 7 are a generation apart, the chances of the manufacturer of the computer or motherboard releasing drivers for both was unlikely. Sometimes the client would opt to have it done anyway but my former Precinct would always warn them that some features may not work correctly.
If you want Windows XP and Windows 7, I suggest the XP Mode that Windows Pro and Ultimate offers. You literally run Windows XP inside a window of Windows 7.
I DO NOT work for Best Buy. Whatever I post are just educated guesses or common sense.

Cannot get to dual-boot screen after Win 8.1 upgrade

Hello,
I have an iMac with Mavericks. Recently installed Win 8 to dual-boot. Instrux then were to hold OPT button during startup to be presented with options for OS with which to boot.
Since Win 8.1 upgrade there is no way to get to that prompt. MS/Win help topics not useful (unsurprisingly). I have the original install disk but would far prefer to save my current config of Mav. Thoughts for workaround?
Cheers,
Michael C

holding down option key at bootup not giving you the bootmenu have nothing to do with win8.1
even if one never installed anything in terms bootcamp at all then holding down the option key should give the option between osx and the restore to last clean osx version
if you don't get the option then I'd say the cause is not windows as the menu is handled by the bootloader which is before windows takes over

Dual booting S540 and linux with Secure Boot?

At some point I intend to install archlinux with dual boot on my Thinkpad S540 which currently runs Windows 8.1.
All the current advice about dual boot on UEFI machines seems to indicate that the way to go is to disable Secure Boot (and Fastboot) for Windows, and then do the linux install choosing a linux bootloader to allow booting either O/S. I believe I know the steps needed to do that.
Does anyone have any experience with dual booting Windows 8.1 and ArchLinux on the S540? I would like to retain Secure Boot for Windows, and in the ideal world have Secure Boot running for ArchLinux also. However Secure Boot is fraught with problems for Linux. There are a few distributions such as Ubuntu which will in principle support Secure Boot but I only use ArchLinux and want to install that particular flavour of linux on my machine. It is of course possible to keep switching Secure Boot on and off in the BIOS before booting either of the two installed operating systems but it would be neater and cleaner to have it all with Secure Boot on, or all with it off.
This is all very new stuff so there may well be a lot of problems, but it is worth exploring. I use rEFInd as my bootloader on another UEFI desktop computer to boot ArchLinux so I am familiar with that bootloader, but dual boot is another thing, and Secure Boot with the fast moving developments in that area is something that until now very few people have tinkered with.
Any replies and guidance/suggestions appreciated.

I'm guessing /boot can run from ntfs, however probably not as efficiently as if it were running on ext3/4. Mine runs on Ext4.
To add confusion, you only create one Extended partition, all partitions you create within the Extended partition are called Logical partitions. You should be able to create enough Logical partitions for your needs.
Primary/Extended partitions are normally sda1-4 and Logical partitions will usually start from sda5 on modern Sata HDD systems.
For /boot I would create a small 100mb Ext4 Logical partition. This partition cannot be inside LVM nor encrypted when using Grub1. I'm not familiar with Grub2.

Dual boot ArchLinux and Win XP on 2 separate HDD

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