Arch Linux

clg

Member

Registered: 2009-06-14

Posts: 7

Installation question/advice

Hello all,

Just started learning Arch Linux inside of virtual box and to my surprise I very much liked tinkering through the command line. My question is, I want to do a real install on my machine, but from my previous experiences, new installations seem to wipe out the windows mbr. My setup is as follows:

Disk 0: System Reserved-100mb ntfs ( Windows 7 RC mbr, am guessing) | D:\ where I plan to install arch 300gb free
Disk 1: C:\ ntfs, where windows 7 rc is installed | E:\ media, downloads. etc

http://imgur.com/3fcfT.jpg
http://imgur.com/5pR5L.jpg

How can I configure grub during the installation so that it recognizes windows 7 rc?

Thanks, sorry for the english or explanation, not my first language.

Last edited by clg (2009-06-15 00:22:12)

demian

Member

From: Frankfurt, Germany

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 709

Re: Installation question/advice

You should just install Grub with default settings which are installation into MBR of your first (master) harddrive.
The mbr btw is not your first partition. It's the first 512 bytes of your harddrive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record).
Once installed you can configure Grub to recognize your Windows 7 installation by adding an entry for the boot partition of Windows 7.
I think this should work for you:

title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

If you want to delete Grub from mbr simply boot from arch linux live cd and type dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1, where of= should be the appropriate drive of course. You can also

Last edited by demian (2009-06-16 20:50:28)

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no place like /home
github

clg

Member

Registered: 2009-06-14

Posts: 7

Re: Installation question/advice

Thanks for the response, that was basically what I was looking for. From what I read about  :rootnoverify:, I am somewhat confused about the (hd0,0) next to it, does that mean that it would entirely ignore disk 0, and go to disk 1?

Thanks in advance

mcmillan

Member

Registered: 2006-04-06

Posts: 737

Re: Installation question/advice

That is specifying the hard drive with syntax hd(drive,partion) with the numbering starting at zero. Actually it looks like from those pictures you should probably have hd(1,0)