Arch Linux

isolor

Member

From: Galicia - Spain

Registered: 2009-11-05

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Vista-Arch dualboot, boot label

I installed my Vista first and now I'm giving a try to Arch, everything during instalation went right and smooth, rebooted, the grub worked and so did Arch, but after booting Vista on the next boot I found out the grub was gone and it went right into vista, went back to the arch install setup with the live CD to find out that the boot label was back on the Vista partition and not the boot partition I had created.

My installation it's in a 320Gb hard drive as follows:

Sda1 Primary with vista (I took out the boot label, but comes back everytime I boot vista from the grub)
Sda2 Primary ext4 60Mb /boot (this is where I installed the grub, and added the boot label that goes away eveytime I boot vista)
Sda3 Primary 2Gb Swap
Sda5 Logical ext4 20Gb /
Sda6 Logical ext4 50Gb /home

I get the label right to it's place and the grub working fine via the live CD, but if I load vista it gets wrong again.

Maybe this is more of a Windows problem, but someone must have had the same problem.

Already tried to find something about this in te forum but couldn't, maybe I'm just to stupid XD.

This is my second post, but most likely like my first, so hi to everyone, hope nop to be much of a nuisance. Excuse my english since it's really poor.

Last edited by isolor (2009-11-05 15:56:06)

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I'm from Spain and don't get to practice English very often, so please don't get mad at my mistakes.

grey

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-08-23

Posts: 679

Re: [SOLVED] Vista-Arch dualboot, boot label

Someone had the same problem: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=83632

You probably installed grub into the boot sector of a partition instead of into the MBR of your first disk.
Check vacants post in the thread above for what this means.

Two options:
1. remove 'makeactive' from the grub entry for Vista
2. install grub to the MBR

I'd go for option 2, since it is much more robust: you're not relying on the Microsoft bootloader to hand control over to grub, grub is in control right from the start.
But both options should work.

If you don't know how to do either 1 or 2 without reinstalling Arch, let me know.

Welcome to the forums, BTW.

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Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

isolor

Member

From: Galicia - Spain

Registered: 2009-11-05

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Vista-Arch dualboot, boot label

Someone had the same problem: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=83632

You probably installed grub into the boot sector of a partition instead of into the MBR of your first disk.
Check vacants post in the thread above for what this means.

That's exactly what I did, I just thougth that by installing it in a different partition, it would work as if it were in the MBR. I'm a newbie so...

Of the two options you gave me, I did both, first removed de makeactive and it worked perfectly both arch a linux booted and the grub stayed right where it belonged, after and as you recomended decided to reinstall it in the MBR (didn't know how to do it, but the arch wiki did, so I didn't have to ask and also found more interesting info in the matter) of course it works perfectly as well. THANKs for helping and for the welcome.

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I'm from Spain and don't get to practice English very often, so please don't get mad at my mistakes.