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#1 2012-12-07 23:40:12

supatortoiseboy
Member
Registered: 2012-12-04
Posts: 8

[solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

This is more of a hypothetical question.

All the wiki stuff i have read (on the arch wiki and off google searches) recomends installing windows first and to the first partition seen by the bios. Is this because windows only understands being in first position or is the installer just very stubborn about where it stores it's boot sector?

The reason i ask this is because i want to create a dual boot that has arch as the first partition (only with two partitions (/ and /home and /boot on sda1)) I realise this is most likely putting myself through unneccesary torture going against the easy and reccomended install option but it will give the opportunity to learn how to re-install the windows at a later stage to the already existing arch installation (for instance if i want to upgrade from win7 to win8).

If anyone has the interest and would like to embark on this with me i will happily share the experiment (on varsity break and have loads of time at my disposal) If it doesn't pan out i can go back and follow the reccomended wiki method without remorse at wasted time.

P.S I have searched the forums and can't find anything that quite answers my question, if anyone has been involved in a thread that i have missed I would be very appreciative of a bump in that threads direction. THe closest I found was https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=153590 I believe the problem there is that he installed over his root partition?

Last edited by supatortoiseboy (2012-12-13 05:59:10)

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#2 2012-12-07 23:52:49

lucke
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From: Poland
Registered: 2004-11-30
Posts: 4,018

Re: [solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

I think the reasoning behind installing Windows first is that otherwise its bootloader would overwrite grub/syslinux which one would ultimately use to dualboot - not a problem if you know how to reinstall grub/syslinux. I have Windows 7 on sda2 (its "system reserved" partition) and sda3 (C), with sda1 being an extended partition holding Arch's partitions - I don't think it matters what partition Windows uses, as long as its boot partition is on a primary one.

Last edited by lucke (2012-12-07 23:55:03)

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#3 2012-12-08 00:10:56

supatortoiseboy
Member
Registered: 2012-12-04
Posts: 8

Re: [solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

Indeed i wouldn't think that it would. Figured it was a work around to accomidate windows brute forcing it's bootloader into sda1. In installing windows would you make a backup of arch's boot sector prior to win istallation? or is it quite happy to re-formulate itself in it's own space (the potential issue i see with re-installing linux bootloader to arch partition sda1 is that if windows did throw it's bootloader there re-installing arch's loader (be it grub or syslinux) may overwrite the win boot info and cause windows to fail to boot?)

Thank you very much for hasty reply :-)

Last edited by supatortoiseboy (2012-12-08 00:12:17)

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#4 2012-12-08 00:34:18

lucke
Member
From: Poland
Registered: 2004-11-30
Posts: 4,018

Re: [solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

Normally you install Arch's bootloader to MBR (grub-install /dev/sda); when you install Windows, it gets overwritten, so you need to run grub-install again. And to boot Windows you make grub point to Windows' boot partition.

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#5 2012-12-08 09:14:22

supatortoiseboy
Member
Registered: 2012-12-04
Posts: 8

Re: [solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

The dual install wiki suggests:

wiki wrote:

make sure to install GRUB to /boot (or root (/)  and
The above instruction is in conflict with the GRUB installation position documented

But i suppose the same logic will apply. will try tomorrow and let you know what result is.

Thanx again mate. help is much appreciated

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#6 2012-12-09 23:42:51

cfr
Member
From: Cymru
Registered: 2011-11-27
Posts: 7,130

Re: [solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

You install a bunch of grub's files to /boot (whether a separate partition or not) and the bootloader stuff in the MBR points at that partition and directory so that grub finds your config file and all the rest. Maybe there is some confusion here because different things end up in different places as a result of grub-install?

[I'm assuming you are booting in BIOS mode and use MBR partition map. Things are more complex if you use EFI and/or GPT.]


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#7 2012-12-10 14:26:14

supatortoiseboy
Member
Registered: 2012-12-04
Posts: 8

Re: [solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

ya using BIOS mode and MBR the question was more over windows need to take up the first 100 MB of the hard drive for it's boot stuff.

trying it now will let you know what errors i encounter and how I overcome them smile

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#8 2012-12-10 14:47:39

supatortoiseboy
Member
Registered: 2012-12-04
Posts: 8

Re: [solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

well the windows enterprise disk hits an error and can't boot up to install

Anyone had an issue like this? It is in virtual box at this time (found an old vdi and decided to play with it rather than the machine). The disk does boot and it gets as far as loading the files it needs into ram and then crashes

Last edited by supatortoiseboy (2012-12-10 15:50:58)

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#9 2012-12-12 23:31:15

recan
Member
Registered: 2011-11-21
Posts: 7

Re: [solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

Salem every body

I don't know if it is in the same subject or not but I like share what I know
I used some modified windows 7 disk which don't made the reserved partition of 100 Mb.
windows need a primary partition to be able to boot properly this is important so if you install windows 7 after installing archlinux   , just use easybcd to repair the boot-loader , it add an entry for archlinux existing installation
hope this help you good luck

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#10 2012-12-13 05:53:22

supatortoiseboy
Member
Registered: 2012-12-04
Posts: 8

Re: [solved]Installing windows 7 to an arch system (win7 not in sda1)

turned out to be fairly simple... windows installed to the second partition but still created it's own 100 MB partition within the partitions allocated space. (maybe i would have had an issue if i wasn't under 4 primary partitions, would be interesting to find out)

ended up using grub2 and os-prober got the boot set up fairly painlessly now just tweaking the install.

thanx again for all the help

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