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Hi. So this is my first install on a physical machine and I've chosen to use Syslinux as opposed to GRUB. I love it and everything works just fine. However, the following wiki entry confuses me:
Note: For Windows, this skips the system's own boot manager (bootmgr), which is required for a few important updates (eg.) to complete. In such cases it may be advisable to temporarily set the MBR boot flag to the Windows partition (eg. with GParted), let the update finish installing, and then reset the flag to the syslinux partition (eg. with Windows's own DiskPart).
While I'm no expert, it's my understanding that BOOTMGR is required to read the BCD store, display the boot menu (if requested), and initialize either Winload or Winresume. It's also my understanding that the VBR of the Windows boot partition ("System Reserved") loads BOOTMGR into memory by default. So, if Syslinux is indeed loading the VBR of this partition (which I'm pointing it to), and Windows is loading successfully (and I'm able to access the boot options with the F8 key), then I'm having trouble understanding how it "skips" BOOTMGR. I would greatly appreciate some clarity, thanks.
My setup (if helpful):
Windows 7 Ultimate x64 / Arch Linux dual boot
Legacy BIOS
MBR disks
lsblk -f output
NAME FSTYPE LABEL UUID MOUNTPOINT
sda
├─sda1 ntfs System Reserved 0ECEE3B1CEE38EF1
├─sda2 ntfs CC38F07438F05F40
├─sda3 ext4 96204d92-41f1-4036-bf11-994e7717a47a /boot
└─sda4 ext4 c689ba45-9716-45f1-bb05-51585ed582ce /
sdb
├─sdb1 swap 93e06ef1-2a0a-4566-b109-c21348b952ea [SWAP]
└─sdb2 ntfs shared 73BECE563635C853 /mnt/shared
sr0
syslinux.cfg
UI menu.c32
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE Arch Boot Menu
TIMEOUT 50
DEFAULT arch
LABEL arch
MENU LABEL Arch Linux
LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
APPEND root=UUID=c689ba45-9716-45f1-bb05-51585ed582ce rw
INITRD ../intel-ucode.img,../initramfs-linux.img
LABEL archfallback
MENU LABEL Arch Linux Fallback
LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
APPEND root=UUID=c689ba45-9716-45f1-bb05-51585ed582ce rw
INITRD ../initramfs-linux-fallback.img
LABEL windows
MENU LABEL Windows 7
COM32 chain.c32
APPEND boot 1
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