Solved Dual Boot Win7 & Arch quick ?

Quick setup here. I have win7 installed on 1/2 of my 500GB HD. SDA: my 160GB storage drive.
I'm in cfdisk during Arch install
sdb1 Prim NTFS sys reserved. 100MB
sdb2 Prim NTFS 250GB
sdb3 Prim Linux "my /boot" 100MB
sdb4 Prim Linux. "/" 30GB
Can't' setup my /swap & /home partition it says unusable.
Thanks for the help.
Last edited by mr.marcus (2012-07-06 02:57:44)

You can't have more than 4 primary partitions. Try extended partitions.
Edit:
I don't have swap, home, boot partitions. I have just one root partition.
Last edited by hadrons123 (2012-07-06 02:01:16)

Similar Messages

[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.

[SOLVED] Dual boot with ubuntu w/o installing GRUB? (YES)

Hi all -
This is my first shot at arch, tho I've installed a few other linux distros.
So far I really appreciate the excellent documentation, especially compared to other linuxes!
But I can't find a good answer to this question:
I already have ubuntu installed and would like to dual-boot with arch. (I also have Win7 but boot it from a separate disk selected via BIOS, and usually leave this disk disconnected anyway, so it's not an issue; grub doesn't know it exists).
Q: Before installing, can I make a new LOGICAL ext4 partition (say /dev/sda7),
- then install arch on that **w/o installing grub** and **without messing with the MBR**,
- then edit ubuntu's existing menu.lst to add arch to the boot options?
Current $ fdisk -l
/dev/sda1 ext4 primary/boot (/ for ubuntu)
/dev/sda2 extended
--/dev/sda6 linux-swap
--/dev/sda5 NTFS (data - mp3s, etc)
unallocated 480GB --> Create new ext4 partition /dev/sda7, (logical or primary? Prefer logical)
Current menu.lst entry that I normally boot:
title Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, kernel 3.2.0-24-generic REGULAR
uuid UUIDforSDA1 (file has actual UUID number...)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic root=UUID=UUIDforSDA1 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic
and add something like this to menu.lst:
title Arch Linux
uuid UUIDforSDA7
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda7/ARCH ro (??? - from example in arch docs)
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
or
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=UUIDforSDA7 ro (??? - like the ubuntu entry)
I'd really like to NOT mess up booting ubuntu! (Another option might be install arch to a separate disk with the ubuntu disk disconnected, then copy the whole install over via a USB adapter...I've done worse!)
TIA for any help!
Edit: so I guess there's three questions:
1 - Can I install arch w/o installing grub & MBR messing-wth?
2 - What's the correct syntax for menu.lst to access and boot arch?
3 - Will this work?
Last edited by Flemur (2012-05-25 15:24:18)

Well, it worked and booted up first time - no grub install.
The main hassle was merely creating a new ext4 partitions because "Partition Wizard" boot CD screwed up and I kept getting "Unable to update kernel until reboot" messages until I deleted and rebuilt all the partitions in the extended partition with puppy linux & gparted instead of Partition Wizard.
In case others stumble upon this trhread, here's some info:
The entry in the ubuntu (original) menu.lst was this:
title Arch Linux
uuid af7...etc...9f3c
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=af7...etc.f3c ro
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
I'm even posting this from arch/fluxbox/Firefox, although getting X set up with nvidia (PITA!) apparently required using a different pacman source:
File "mirrorlist" now points to
Server = http://mirror.us.leaseweb.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
which wasn't in the original file.
Then
$ pacman -Su --> "/etc/mtab exists" --> delete it and something else broke,
so
$ pacman -Su --force --> worked fine (against official advice)
Also: needed to install nvidia-utils and xorg-xinit
Thanks again!

[SOLVED] Dual boot with Windows 8, problems after updating Windows

Hi all,
I have been maintaining a dual boot of arch and Windows 8 for some time. I recently updated Windows to 8.1, and found that the update process had two side effects:
1) The update added a new partition in the middle of my file table, so my /etc/fstab which referenced "/dev/sda6" was wrong because that partition is now "/dev/sda7."
2) The default boot device was switched to the Windows Boot Loader instead of grub. But, this is not a problem because I can work around this by using the "Choose boot device" feature of my bios at start up.
So, neither of these problems are critical for me at the moment. I can fix my fstab and just press a hotkey at startup.
EDIT: I have avoided the /etc/fstab issue by referencing my partitions using UUID as specified in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fstab.
How do I set the default boot device back to grub? There is some weirdness here, I think windows is using UEFI booting and my grub uses the old booting system.
Last edited by bjmnbraun (2014-05-14 19:00:36)

Rex: I tried that command, got some warning messages regarding blocklists, but no dice.
Loqs: You are right about windows using a ESP and UEFI while my linux is not booting using UEFI. My bios is configured to try "Legacy boot" first before trying UEFI. Getting linux to boot using UEFI seemed like a pain, so...
I went into my BIOS settings and found that the Windows Boot Manager boot device was listed in front of my hard disk (which boots linux). I don't think this used to be the case, so something about the update caused my BIOS to reorder the boot devices (probably because the partitions changed).
Switching my hard disk to be above the Windows Boot Manager in the boot device list now makes me boot into linux by default, and I can boot into windows by pressing a hotkey at bootup and selecting the windows boot manager.

Dual boot Win7 on external eSata drive with Precision M4700

Because virtualization doesn't support some HW devices I need, I would like to dual boot Win7 Pro/64 on an external (removable) HDD connected to the eSATA port of my Precision M4700.
eSata means optimal performances, but will the boot menu be happy with a removable disk, i.e. which will NOT be permanently connected (obviously I won't boot the OS on the removable disk if it is not connected) ?
And on the legal side, is it OK to use the OEM license of the OS that shipped with the system for this ?
As a side question, are the OS entries in a Win7 boot menu bound to a physical disk on a specific Sata port ? IOW, what happens if I move a HDD with a bootable partition/volume from the internal bay (port 0) to an external eSATA enclosure connected to the eSATA port (port 5) ? Is the eSATA port transparent to the Win7 boot loader ? Will the volumes and drive letters remain unchanged and appear seamlessly to the OS on it ?

Hi Benoitm,
Assuming the M4700 can boot from an external eSATA port, this should be possible. And it should be possible to install onto an HDD then put that drive in an external case and boot from it. Your preferences and drive letters should be retained. You might want to verify your system can boot to an external HDD first.
The Dell license only covers the version of the OS that came with the system. In theory, dual boot requires two licenses.

Windows 7 / Arch Linux Dual-Boot - win7 keeps changing the boot flag!

Greetings!
Its been a long while since I had to dual-boot with windows on the same machine.
I 've installed windows 7 and then arch linux and installed GRUB on my sda1 where the /boot partitions is located at.
I've managed to boot into arch successfully and later into windows also successfully.... but when i tried to boot into arch again I wasn't greeted with the typical GRUB boot screen... grub was ignored completely and win7 booting began as if it was the only OS in my hard drive.
I've used the gparted live cd and realized that the boot flag has changed from my /boot partition (sda1) to my windows partition (sda2). I've changed it back and I was able to boot into arch again. but when I rebooted to win7 and then to arch the same thing has happened. The boot flag keeps changing whenever im rebooting into windows making impossible for me to boot with GRUB unles I manually change the flag again.
I haven't installed GRUB into the MBR because I hear it is a bad practice when you have a windows OS also installed (something with service packs not being able to install, among other things). I also don't want to use the easyBCD method to boot arch using the win7 loader.
here is the partition scheme on my 500gb sata drive :
/dev/sda1 /boot 250mb (primary)
/dev/sda2 windows 7 ntfs 100gb (primary)
/dev/sda3 swap 4gb (primary)
/dev/sda5 / 16gb (logical)
/dev/sda6 /var 8gb (logical)
/dev/sda7 /home the rest of the hd space (logical)
What am I doing wrong and how do i prevent the boot flag from changing?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!
Last edited by kamigr (2010-01-12 14:35:07)

naequs wrote:
bumping this because i have the EXACT same problem !
however i installed grub to sda1 because i didnt want my installs to mess with each other (not that ive had any problems with grub in mbr though...) .
this just looked cleaner to me.
if anyone has figured out how to prevent windows from automagically changing the bootgflag, id like to know !
but maybe this is a question more suitable for a windoze forum
tia
/edit: seriously, ive been searching the net for some time now, including irc chans and there seems to be no solution to this ! all threads similar to this just end dead !
i hate how windows claims to own my computer!
1. don't necrobump
2. as mentioned in the thread, just install grub to mbr and chainload windows. It works just fine and is the easiest way to get it working reliable.

[Solved]dual boot windows 7 and arch linux

I have successfully installed arch linux dual boot with the original win7 on my PC. If I only use linux, then the system works well. The problem is that once I boot into Win7 then after reboot, the linux boot manager will stop working and the system always boots into windows automatically. My guess is Win7 automatically repair the boot loader.
My current solution is whenever I have finished using Windows, I'll boot with my linux USB installation, and run "gummiboot --path=/boot install". Afterwards, linux will work fine. But I believe there must be a better solution. Any help will be appreciated.
I have UEFI board by the way.
Last edited by jl2014 (2015-04-19 17:35:57)

Thanks for all your help first! I have tried Head_on_a_Stick's suggestions as the first step. Here is what I did. I have created :
$ cat /boot/loader/entries/windows.conf
title Windows
efi /EFI/hidden/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
The window boot path was :
/boot/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
and I changed
/boot/EFI/Microsoft
to
/boot/EFI/hidden
After reboot, I clicked 'Windows' option on the linux boot manager. Below are the error messages:
Windows failed to start.
File: \EFI\Microsoft/Boot/BCD
Info: An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data.
Any idea what goes wrong?
I'll try other suggestions soon. Thanks all of you again.
Last edited by jl2014 (2015-04-19 00:03:33)

[SOLVED] Dual Boot Window 7 & Arch on a Uefi system.

From the Wiki
Windows 7 x86_64 versions support booting in x86_64 UEFI mode from GPT disk only, OR in BIOS mode from MBR/msdos disk only. They do not support IA32 (x86 32-bit) UEFI boot from GPT/MBR disk, x86_64 UEFI boot from MBR/msdos disk, or BIOS boot from GPT disk.
I don't understand this. As stated in the title I have a ueif system so that means I have to create a GPT disk ? I already have a gpt disk which I confirmed by running Arch Live USB. Under type it said GPT. I don't understand this at all
However if Arch is installed in BIOS-GPT in one disk and Windows is installed in BIOS-MBR mode in another disk, then the BIOS bootloader used by Arch CAN boot the Windows in the other disk, if the bootloader itself has the ability to chainload from another disk.
Note: If Arch and Windows are dual-booting from same disk, then Arch SHOULD follow the same firmware boot mode and partitioning combination used by the installed Windows in the disk.
In the Note above it says both Arch and Windows follow the same boot mode if they are dual booting from same disk. I DO NOT want to do this. I have already decided to partition my drive with 200 Gb going to Windows and 500 Gb going to Arch. Does this mean that I should install both in different modes i.e. Arch in Bios-GPT and Windows in Bios-MBR.
The recommended way to setup a Linux/Windows dual booting system is to first install Windows, only using part of the disk for its partitions. When you have finished the Windows setup, boot into the Linux install environment where you can create additional partitions for Linux while leaving the existing Windows partitions untouched.
UEFI systems
Both Gummiboot and rEFInd autodetect Windows Boot Manager \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi and show it in their boot menu, so there is no manual config required.
For GRUB(2) follow GRUB#Windows_Installed_in_UEFI-GPT_Mode_menu_entry.
Syslinux (as of version 6.02 and 6.03-pre9) and ELILO do not support chainloading other EFI applications, so they cannot be used to chainload \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi .
Computers that come with newer versions of Windows often have secure boot enabled. You will need to take extra steps to either disable secure boot or to make your installation media compatible with secure boot.
Being a beginner should I go with Gummiboot then. GRUB made a mess last time.
Also my secure boot is NOT enabled so is that good.
I have read the FAQs, Beginner's guide, Installation Guide, Dual Boot wiki entry but I just don't understand the above concepts. But it looks this this is the main thing in dual booting. Almost everything else is doable but this I have to get right on account of what happened the last time I installed Arch without getting the above right.
Last edited by Some Arch Lovin (2014-06-14 08:53:14)

A few issues with the dual boot setup
Hello again, I lost my dual factor authentication grid from lastpass. Opensuse was acutally overwriting new pdf files over my old pdf files so now that grid pdf is actually an Arch cheat cheet with the name last_pass_grid.pdf. And the gmail account I used to register to Arch forums is also in last pass.
This is why I created another account. I am some arch lovin.
The installation went smoothly but I could not dual boot Windows7 with Arch because my Win7 image is not UEFI bootable so had to dual boot win8(not a fan at all) and arch.
Almost everything is working correctly. I have a few issues that aren't affecting how the system is working but they still need sorting out.
I'll do them one at a time but I want to know from the admins if I should start a new thread? Because in a way this thread accomplished it job i.e. win7 and arch dual booting in uefi system.
If the answer is yes I should create a new thread depending upon the issue then I will do that but in case its a no since I have only 2-3 problems I am going to ask help for the first one.
My gummiboot is not working on startup. I have to press f12 and use bios booting menu to boot. The problem with that is if I put Windows at the top of the boot priority the bios does not show F12 and F2 at the time of booting up so I can't access the boot menu. I have to boot into Windows and crash it by holding the power button and then the F12 options shows up and I am able to boot into Arch. If I put Arch at the top then Windows keeps restoring back to an earlier version due to start up options.
NOTE : I can't be sure but one it did work(only once). I checked the images online to compare with what I saw and its very similar. An all black screen with three bootloading options
Windows
Arch
Opensuse(don't know why I created a completely new GPT partition table)
This is what I did while installing Gummiboot
# mount -t efivarfs efivarfs /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
# pacman -S gummiboot
# gummiboot install
I tried going through the gummiboot to see if I can do something but it very difficult to comprehend as a beginner. All I get is the characters gummiboot understands but thats all.
Last edited by Archer61 (2014-06-11 13:48:56)

[SOLVED] Dual boot windows 7 and arch Linux with seperate hard drives

Ok so I'm stuck trying to get my computer to dual boot windows 7 and arch. They are installed on different hard drives and I have grub 2 as the boot loader. I can't find any tutorials on how to do it with seperate hard drives I know how to do it if they are on the same hard drive. Also I want windows on the "first" hard drive how do I check to see which one it considers the first?
Last edited by bdawg (2012-09-21 23:15:37)

DSpider wrote:
drobole wrote:If you want to change it so that sda becomes sdb and sdb becomes sda, you should be able to do that in BIOS.
Not from the BIOS. He would need to physically open up the computer and switch the cables between them (or add another drive).
There's no actual performance increase in changing this order. Performance increase is when you have the partitions as close to the beginning of a HDD as possible, where the platters spin faster (basic mechanics, not to be confused with CD/DVD, which are being written from the inside-out to prevent errors after extended usage), and it especially doesn't apply to SSDs whatsoever.
You may be right about that. I remember I had to do this a while back but I probably switched the cables. It also messed up the drive mapping in Windows 98 if I remember correctly.

[SOLVED] Dual booting arch onto an SSD that already has W7 in MBR?

I currently have windows 7 64bit installed onto a 256gb m4 SSD. I would like to be able to dual-boot W7 and Archlinux, but so far I've been getting wildly varying accounts of doom and data deletion from every source that I've looked at- and unfortunately, the Archwiki's guide to dualbooting is out of date.
So here's the questions:
First, is UEFI something I need to look at? At the moment W7 seems to be on MBR. I'm getting conflicting accounts on whether this is not even an issue or if it will attempt to make my computer eat my dog.
Next, what is going on with sectors and alignment and such? Some people ignore them, some people delve so far into it that I think I vaguely know they're still talking about a hard drive.
Which leads me into partitioning, and not doing it in a way that's terrible. I can't find any information on this anywhere that isn't buried within the above-mentioned posts, along with incredibly vague warnings of GParted moving a partition, spoken of in a way as if that data is lost to the twilight zone.
Finally... pulling all this together is the largest issue.
Do any of you know good, factual resources where I can look into this stuff?
Last edited by ilar (2013-04-03 03:53:31)

1) If you knew what UEFI was you should have known it wasn't an option, and shouldn't have asked about it.
2) (G)parted and gdisk (if you go with GPT at some point) handle SSD sector alignment automatically, and have for some time. A google search could have revealed that.
3) Whether one uses an SSD or HDD, dual-booting will be the same: 2+ partitions devoted to separate operating systems. While SSDs and HDDs may be fundamentally different constructs, booting from them is not different at all. That's why you aren't finding anything saying such.
4) As for the wiki being out-of-date, the specific reason (as stated page's in the header) is that GRUB legacy is no longer officially supported in Arch. Disregard that information and use GRUB2/Syslinux/LILO and the process remains the same: Install the operating systems side-by-side and chainload the secondary OS. It doesn't matter one bit: I've dual-booted every Linux distro I've used over the past four years with Windows, from Ubuntu to Mint to SuSE to Sabayon to Arch to whatever, and I've done it all the exact same way, using HDDs and an SSDs and both in combination. There's plenty of information out there on this, and your time could better have been spent looking it up rather than arguing with people here.
5) Welcome to Arch.

[Solved]Dual booting Arch and Fedora

i was hoping to partition like this:
/boot (same for both)
/root (arch)
/swap (same for both)
/root (fedora)
/home (same for both)
this doing is according to: bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=97121
as both are using grub2, i don't think having same /boot would coz any trouble
and about /home, having uid and gid 500 for both arch and fedora would not cause any trouble,eh?
how do i change uid and gid from 100 to 500 on first boot in arch?
thnz in advnc
Last edited by eric17 (2012-05-25 18:25:04)

eric17 wrote:guys!..ran into a new one
now that, i have gpt table(want to try it for the first time), so bootloader doesn't install in MBR, so how to install it on /dev/sda1(no seperate for boot)?
there is no method to change the location from sda to sda1(as installer discourages it)
if it is so important to have it in MBR, then how do I force it while 'Install bootloader'?
first i created bios_grub(1mb) on /sda1 through fedora installation(as without it, after installing arch, fedora was showing error that there is no boot storage device 1 or somethin like that)
then, through Gparted:
/root /sda2 fedora
/root /sda3 arch
/swap both
simple ext4 data partion (later i would create folders in it and bind them to each distro's home
then installed arch without bootloader in end....after that fedora and it installed grub 1.99 on /sda
now, both are booting fine
thnx to every one

How to remove windows 7 safely from my dual boot win7/win8 pc ?

i have a pc which is dual boot with windows 7 ultimate 64 bit & windows 8 pro 64 bit, my pc had four drives C: D: E: F:, windows 7 is on "D:" drive & windows 8 is on C: drive(i had set win8 as current & default OS), now when i opened
disk management i found that the D: drive where win7 is residing is marked as
system,active,primary partition, now i don't want win7 anymore , i want only win8 on my pc, i want to format & get back clean empty D drive to use for other stuff (i don't want to delete the D drive partition), can any one explain me the steps
needed to achieve this safely.

Since you've selected as default OS as Windows 8.1 you can go to disk management console and format the drive as required.
You can remove the Win 7 entry from boot loader:
To launch msconfig:
Click Start
In the Search text box, type msconfig
Launch msconfig by selecting it from the search results above the search text box.
After msconfig is launched:
Go to the Boot tab
Slect the boot entry you want to delete.
Click the Delete button and then click OK.
Arnav Sharma | http://arnavsharma.net/ Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading
the thread.

[SOLVED] dual booting windows 7 with btrfs on grub-bios -- core.img

I am trying to install arch in a dual boot configuration with an existing windows 7 partition. I have everything from the beginner's guide done but the bootloader. When I run grub-install it tells me that core.img is too big.
Some googling tells me that this is relatively common with btrfs, and it seems the only work around is to switch to gpt mode and use a grub bios partition. But the info I've seen indicates that I need to use MBR mode to dual boot windows.
Is it safe to do this with windows? Is there another workaround? Or will I have to settle for ext4?
Last edited by jorenko (2013-06-09 03:53:24)

Well there's your problem, your first partition starts at sector 63. With recent versions of windows and fdisk (and every other partitioning tool I can think of off the top of my head) things now align themselves correctly. Also because there is now GPT, the first partition typically starts later as the GPT partition table will typically sit between the MBR and the first partition.
On a MBR partitioned system, grub2 will actually use the first 446 bytes like normal, but will then also use the space that is empty where GPT would sit. This is why when you have a GPT partitioned system, it will require you to create a 1-2MB grub boot partition, as it needs somewhere else to put its bloat. GPT actually still uses the MBR section, but simply creates one large partition covering the whole disk. This is so that tools that are not GPT aware will not think that they have a whole free disk to use as they please.
For comparison, here is whe I get from fdisk:
# fdisk -l /dev/sda
sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
[sudo] password for curtisshima:
WARNING: fdisk GPT support is currently new, and therefore in an experimental phase. Use at your own discretion.
Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk label type: gpt
# Start End Size Type Name
1 2048 2099199 1G EFI System EFI System
2 2099200 252166798 119.2G Linux filesyste arch-btrfs-1
3 252168192 488397134 112.7G Linux filesyste arch-btrfs-3
Note that I do use GPT. But that is not the point here. What I am trying to show is where my first partition starts. This is also where fdisk will start partitions these days. This is to ensure compatibility with 4k advanced format disks.
If you are not dead set on Grub2, you could try using syslinux. I really like it much better, though if you are booting more than one Linux, you need to either employ chainloading to various partition boot records, or have a shared /boot. Having a windows partition doens't really matter, as you are simply chainloading to that funky reserved partition anyway.
The other option is to use grub-legacy, which can still be found in the AUR. I actually liked the orginal Grub, as it provided a nice feature set, but was still configurable by hand and it actually fit into the MBR.

Dual boot Win7 pre-loaded and XP

I have a T510 that came pre-loaded with Win7 Professional. I'd like to dual boot with XP that I have loaded on a different hard drive on the same T510.
I do have the recovery disks. I can't do a fresh install of XP because it have over 300 programs installed. Is there some way to run the recovery disks with Win7 Pro to not format the XP partition. Can I make the XP partition read only and then run the recovery disks?
Maybe someone knows of a way to install the recovery disks, then ( I know how to move Win7 and make a partition before Win7 then restore XP to the hard drive) then repair Win7 so it has the correct drive letters.
Thanks,
Docfxit

Docfxit wrote:
That's a good idea. I might end up doing this. The problem I have is I can't get all the Lenovo setup/programs that come with the restore disk to load. I know I can get some of them loaded with System Update.
What setup/programs will you be missing? I run a vanilla WIn 7 Pro 64 on my T400 and used TVSU to pull down everything that I need.
It may be that some multimedia stuff will be missing, but grab the installers for them from your Lenovo Win 7 setup before wiping it or removing that drive. Probably in C:\SWTOOLS (at least they were there in the old days. I don't have a Lenovo '7 load to examine.)
I'd probably do something like this, since I can't resist messing with a multiboot machine: clone the XP install to a large HD - or use the one you have if it 's big enough. Shrink the XP C: partition with your favorite tool. Fire up a MS '7 install DVD and install into the free space. I'm told you can use the Win 7 activation code that came w/your machine, but you may have to call MS.
Install TVSU for Win 7 and let it pull down the rest. Come to think of it, that's what I did with my XP T61.
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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[solved] Dual Boot OCZ RevoDrive 3

I just received an OCZ RevoDrive 3 for christmas and was wondering why it wasn't showing up under Arch when it was definitely being detected by the BIOS. I found a thread from last year about the original RevoDrive that said it needed dmraid to work correctly and I assumed that was problem and that the modules weren't built into the CK kernel I was using. So I rebooted to the stock kernel and it still wasn't listed with fdisk -l, so I googled stuff about it and saw on the OCZ forums that Linux was supported!! Luckily some Canadian guy wrote drivers for it and said they were accepted into the mainline kernel as of 3.2-rc1 but dual-booting was supported yet (this was from 12/8/2011).
Before I waste a few hours on trying to get Arch and Windows 7 installed on it (it's 120GB), does anyone know if this works yet? Thanks!
edit: I can't seem to build a working 3.2-rc7 kernel image. I tried building it twice with this script but I got kernel panics each time. So I decided to manually compile it and not use my current .config but all that does is hang after "loading linux.....", I really don't want to return this drive because it's going to be absolutely amazing when it works!
edit: Here's better support
Last edited by brando56894 (2012-01-09 21:40:36)

How should I be compiling my new kernel? Should I be copying my currently running config or should I start fresh? Whenever I try and use my old config it just results in a kernl panic, even with the dmraid package installed. If I start fresh it will boot but some of my devices don't work (because I forgot to select them during the config, it was a test run).
mkinitcpio.conf
HOOKS="base udev autodetect scsi sata dmraid filesystems usbinput"
rc.conf
MODULES=(vboxdrv snd_seq_oss snd_pcm_oss snd_mixer_oss dm_mod)
# Scan for FakeRAID (dmraid) Volumes at startup
USEDMRAID="yes"
Last edited by brando56894 (2011-12-27 19:02:59)

Solved Dual Boot Win7 & Arch quick ?

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