Question about the "Windows and Arch Dual Boot" wiki

Gumper · 2009-10-31 15:57:25

I've been reading this wiki http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Win … _Dual_Boot to get a better understanding of what I need to do to install Arch along side of my XP installation and there's one point that I don't understand. Here it is

It is important to note that there is a 1024 cylinder limit with some older BIOSs. This means that the BIOS cannot access things beyond the 1024th cylinder (about 8.5GB), so the /boot partition should be in the first 8.5GB (space before Windows partition).

How does one go about getting the /boot partition created during the installation of Arch to install in the first 8.5g? I have installed Arch in Virtualbox twice so far just so that I'm familiar with the procedure and I can't see anything in the installation where I can do this.

There's one other item that is not clear to me as I've seen conflicting information on it. If I do create a seperate "/boot" partition for Arch, do I need to make it "bootable"during the installation? At this point I don't think that I do.

My understanding of installing to be able to dual boot is that I only need to install Grub to "Sda" and of course edit the grub menu to add the information needed for XP. Is this enough?

Thanks for any help.

hokasch · 2009-10-31 18:01:20

Yes, you install grub to sda (master boot record), and add the entry for Windows. In the step where you partition the harddrive, you can choose where to create it. Actually it may not be that much of a problem anymore, my boot is on the third partition, after ~15 GB. You can forget about the bootable flag when using grub, it does not care.

Gumper · 2009-10-31 21:45:26

Thanks hokasch. That helps to clear it up for me.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-10-31 15:57:25

Question about the "Windows and Arch Dual Boot" wiki

#2 2009-10-31 18:01:20

Re: Question about the "Windows and Arch Dual Boot" wiki

#3 2009-10-31 21:45:26

Re: Question about the "Windows and Arch Dual Boot" wiki

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