[SOLVED] Dual-boot Arch/Windows - 2 hard drives

Hi Everyone
I've just installed Arch and I'm having a bit of a problem dual-booting between Arch and Windows XP, which are each on a seperate Hard drive.
I've done this successfully before with Mepis Linux and Windows XP, but for some reason it's not working this time.   
The difference is that I've recently purchased a new computer and both Windows and Arch are on SATA drives whereas last time they were both on IDE drives.  Also I'm not sure whether or not to enable SATA AHCI mode in the BIOS (apparently it doesn't work with XP anyways), or SATA port 0-3 Native mode.  Although I've tried all possible combinations and it doesn't seem to work at all.
Here is my menu.lst file:
# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/0df05d3b-537c-4576-ad36-1f90a6b01ec0 ro vga=773
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
# (1) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
When I boot into Arch from Grub it works fine,  but when I try to boot into Windows from Grub, I get this:
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
and then nothing....No error message or anything. It just hangs.  Does anyone have any ideas as to what's happening? Thanks in advance.
edit:  It seems I solved the problem by adding these lines to the menu.lst file:
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root (hd1,0)
I can now boot into either Arch or Windows from the Grub menu
Last edited by axle (2008-09-30 02:35:54)

This is a question that can very easily be answered by doing a simple google serach.  Google is your friend.  I suggest you start there and come back if you run into issues.

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    Luca
    Last edited by enigmatichus (2011-12-27 02:05:14)

    It worked!!! Actually I don't know what changed, I proceeded removing the first disk (arch) WITHOUT, this time, changing the position of the windows disk. I used windows 7 DVD to repair the second disk. It tooks several attempts since it failed without specifying the problem. Eventually, I was able to boot windows 7, everything worked. Then, I plugged the primary linux hard drive and booted into arch, where I used "grub-install /dev/sda" as root. It executed without errors, but when I checked menu.lst file, surprisingly I discovered that it was not changed at all by grub-install.
    Anyway it must have detected windows on /dev/sdb, since I am now able to boot both arch and windows without problems.
    It was a weird situation, but anyway it worked well!! Thank you for the support, I really appreciate!
    Luca

  • [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!

  • [SOLVED] RTC and dual booting with Windows 8/8.1

    I am planning ahead of installing Arch on a windows 8.1 laptop, and need to understand whether or not the known Windows registry hack to get windows to use UTC for the RTC is still valid for Windows 8/8.1?  I have been searching via google and the usual sources of information, but it is not clear to me if there are problems doing this, specifically if arch is dual booted with Windows 8/8.1 rather than older versions of the MS OS. Certainly I have used the technique without any problem in the past when dual booting Windows XP with Arch on several different machines.
    Does anyone have personal experience with doing this on a Windows 8 or 8.1 machine and can report here on whether it works successfully or not?
    Thanks for any advice.
    Last edited by mcloaked (2014-02-11 21:16:21)

    Since there were no replies at this point I thought I would just go ahead and implement the registry hack on the Windows 8.1 O/S in the laptop and see if Windows behaves.  It appears to be OK, with the displayed time being correct after reboot, and time synchronisation remaining fine with no problems seen in the displayed time, although I won't be able to read the RTC directly until I have completed the Arch install in the coming week or two.  I now don't foresee any issues with the time synchronisation between booting Arch and Windows 8.1 so I will mark this as solved.
    Since the RTC is now in UTC then normal clock config in Arch using chrony should perform normally once the install is done and the new system set up.
    Last edited by mcloaked (2014-02-11 21:17:11)

  • Separately encrypt dual-boot system: Windows+Arch

    Hey guys, I want to use a dual-boot system: Windows 7 + Arch (windows being first on hdd). I would also want to encrypt them, but make it so I could access them with different passwords, like if I enter arch, i woudn't be able to see contents of windows, and vice-versa. I need arch to be on LVM, ext4 filesystem(the latter not so important, if it's trouble).
    I've come accross this guide: https://aprescott.com/posts/dual-bootin … encryption which describes windows 7 encrypted with truecrypt + arch(on lvm) encrypted with dm-crypt+luks, grub legacy is put inside MBR, truecrypt bootloader resides on linux /boot, copied from MBR after truecrypt installed it there and then replaced with GRUB. With described approach there is windows boot partition and linux boot partition which remain unencrypted.
    1) The question is, is it possible to do something similar but make those boot partitions encrypted too? so the only thing unencrypted would be MBR? I've read that people used Disc cryptor and with it easily encrypted windows boot partition with no trouble. What about linux boot partition? Maybe there is a way not to make separate /boot for linux, and encrypt the whole lvm partition with truecrypt(so truecrypt would install it's bootloader into MBR and i could save it and use just like in the link i gave above)?
    2)Another question is for people using truecrypt for whole disk encryption. When you do full disk encryption or system encryption(for example Windows), the only thing left unencrypted is MBR? Is the boot sector of windows partition encrypted too? So in this case it maybe possible to keep MBR(at least the bootloader, without partition table) on separate media.
    3)Also, in case of full disk encryption, is partition table encrypted too?
    and please, I don't want questions as "Why do you need it this way?". I just want to have full disk encryption, so if the MBR is the only thing unencrypted I could keep it on separate media and boot from it(Disc Cryptor allows such feature), but I also need the system to be split into windows and linux parts, accessible by different passwords. And I dont think the idea of using truecrypt hidden partition and hidden os is good in here.
    Thanks in advance.
    Last edited by Kape (2013-01-24 13:58:41)

    hiciu wrote:
    /dev/sda
    +--------------------------------------+
    |(mbr and partition table) |
    | +----------------------------------+ |
    | |(truecrypt) windows boot partition| |
    | |----------------------------------| |
    | |(truecrypt) windows 7 | |
    | |----------------------------------| |
    | |linux boot partition | |
    | |----------------------------------| |
    | |(lvm on luks) | |
    | | +------------------------------+ | |
    | | |rootfs | | |
    | | |------------------------------| | |
    | | |home | | |
    | | |------------------------------| | |
    | | |swap | | |
    | | +------------------------------+ | |
    | +----------------------------------+ |
    +--------------------------------------+
    3)Also, in case of full disk encryption, is partition table encrypted too?
    Take a look at diagram #1 . Mbr and partition table will be not encrypted. You don't want that: there are no sensitive data in there; both windows and linux need to access partition table to know where are partitions on disk; mbr must contain some not encrypted code that will be loaded by bios, since that code can't be encrypted it can be modified (potentially in such a way to hide the modifications from the system), as long as you boot from this device there is no way around it without "secure boot" and mbr singing.
    I believe windows boot partition and windows partition can be encrypted with truecrypt (you need to check that, I don't know truecrypt). There still will be some minimal not encrypted bootloader in order to ask you for for key / passphrase, so it is not 100% secure (someone could replace it; search for "evil maid" attack by Joanna Rutkowska).
    Linux bootloader (I forgot about it on diagram) and linux boot partition can't be encrypted (again, unless you do: truecrypt -> grub2 / syslinux -> linux, and there still will be not encrypted minimal bootloader).
    You see, the problem is always the same: you can't boot from encrypted device. You need something that will decrypt it first.
    I just want to have full disk encryption, so if the MBR is the only thing unencrypted I could keep it on separate media and boot from it(Disc Cryptor allows such feature), but I also need the system to be split into windows and linux parts, accessible by different passwords.
    In order to secure boot partitions / bootloaders one could separate encryption and bootloaders, keep data on encrypted disk and keep bootloaders code at secure location (i.e. on pen drive attached to key chain). Take a look at diagram #2:
    /dev/sda /dev/usb-stick
    +--------------------------------------+ +--------------------------+
    |(mbr and partitions table) | |(mbr and partitions table)|
    | +----------------------------------+ | | +----------------------+ |
    | |other data / partitions | | | |linux boot partition | |
    | +----------------------------------+ | | | +------------------+ | |
    | |(lvm on luks) | | | | |grub / syslinux | | |
    | | +------------------------------+ | | | | |kernel | | |
    | | |rootfs | | | | | |initramfs | | |
    | | |------------------------------| | | | | +------------------+ | |
    | | |home | | | | +----------------------+ |
    | | |------------------------------| | | +--------------------------+
    | | |swap | | |
    | | +------------------------------+ | |
    | +----------------------------------+ |
    +--------------------------------------+
    In this setup you boot your system from usb stick. Bios will load and execute mbr and bootloader from usb stick (and you know its good since you have it physically secured), it should decrypt luks and boot system. You still can run windows with truecrypt using /dev/sda as boot device. I know I didn't exactly answered your questions.
    1)so this way i can leave mbr(including partition table) empty on hdd, while having them on usb stick? good. I can put copy of mbr with truecrypt loader on that usb stick too along with /boot partition just like in the link i gave above? So there would be NOTHING left unencrypted on my hdd? i like it.
    2)My main goal is that hdd would look like blank if someone would want to check its contents. I've heard using Luks leaves some traces in the volume header?(it's not possible to use truecrypt for full linux system encryption too, right?)
    3)How do i properly put /boot on usb stick? Also will there be any troubles updating arch with /boot being on separate media?
    thanks!

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