Arch Linux

K2712

Member

From: Greenville, SC

Registered: 2006-05-17

Posts: 28

Installing Vista second

I know it's easier to install windows first, but I REALLY don't want to reinstall my arch system again, now that I have it just the way I like. 

If I create another partition to install vista on, and have a LiveCD standing by to reinstall GRUB afterwards, is there anything else that I need to be looking out for?

It seems like I shouldn't have to wipe out my current system just to install another OS---or is that just the way it is?

lloeki

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 456

Website

Re: Installing Vista second

quick rundown:
- have a free partition
- optionally format it with ntfstools
- install windows on it (be careful to choose the right partition, step above helps not to make mistakes). it'll take over the mbr with its bootloader
- boot on the livecd
- mount your /
- chroot into it
- run grub (then root (hd0,0) and setup (hd0), adapt to your config) or grub-install (never used it), to reinject grub into the mbr
- add a chainload entry to grub's menu.lst

always worked for me with xp, and as far as I heard it works with vista.

note that windows is sometimes picky abouth which partition it wants to be able to boot on. sometimes it failed on me on extended partitions, and sometimes it absolutely wanted to be in sda1, else (in both cases) it failed to configure its own bootloader, and failed to boot again. even gentoo's ultrabuggy gtk installer works better. ridiculous.

Last edited by lloeki (2007-05-11 06:36:31)

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.:B:.

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2006-11-26

Posts: 5,819

Website

Re: Installing Vista second

lloeki's post is pretty thorough, except for the NTFS formatting. Golden rule: use native tools for such low-level things as formatting :-). I wouldn't want to install Windows stuff on partitions that have been formatted by Linux tools (nor vice versa).

I got some Linux vfat-formatted devices that don't run on Windows but do run on Linux (my cell phone's micro SD for example). Then again, I don't care about Windows not reading my stuff .

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lloeki

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-02-20

Posts: 456

Website

Re: Installing Vista second

msdostools and ntfstools are 100% native compliant and readable by windows.
the case of your cell phone is a usual one, where the embedded device only ships with some custom fat driver, which decides things by himself and exmect, like 'if storage size <2G then use fat16 else use fat32' regardless of the formatting you did, among others. I encountered this a lot in the embedded realm (cell phones, digital cameras, PDAs, etc...)

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ezzetabi

Member

Registered: 2006-08-27

Posts: 947

Re: Installing Vista second

I had a similar problem also, I am using an external hard disk as Mame roms storage. It is 80GB and I wanted format it with FAT32 since I want playing with friends everywhere. Pity that WXP refuses of reading a 80GB FAT32 while Linux have no problems at all :S

Geekosaurio

Member

From: Valencia - Venezuela

Registered: 2007-04-26

Posts: 17

Re: Installing Vista second

As far as I know Vista refuse to boot if he finds a different bootloader in the MBR, I suggest you to install Vista on your new partition and then install EasyBCD http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 and create an entry for your Arch in Vista, you should reconfigure your linux bootloader to be installed on your linux partition , I did it this way and it works but I've found a problem when I update my kernel, apparently you have to erase and re-create your Arch entry in Vista after you made a change in your kernel and reinstall your linux bootloader. I hope that it helps you.

PD: Sorry for my lousy English and greetings from Venezuela.

funkyou

Member

From: Berlin, DE

Registered: 2006-03-19

Posts: 848

Website

Re: Installing Vista second

As far as I know Vista refuse to boot if he finds a different bootloader in the MBR

Works here without problems... I suggest to install Vista on the first primary partition. When i had it on another one, booting took much more time...

Heres how i do it:

- Vista partition is /dev/hda1 (formatted using the vista installer) and Arch root is /dev/hda5
- Install Vista
- Boot from Arch CD
- Enter the following commands:

mount /dev/hda5 /mnt       (if you have a separate /usr, also mount it)
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs none /mnt/sys
chroot /mnt /bin/bash
grub-install /dev/hda     (this will re-use the existing grub config)
exit
reboot

After booting into arch i just had to add a Grub-entry for vista:

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

btw, this is mostly taken from the Wiki entry

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enderst

Member

Registered: 2004-06-28

Posts: 69

Re: Installing Vista second

to save your current install, put vista into any partition you want. doesn't even need to be a primary partition. then use funkyou's advice to get grub re-installed. might edit grub.conf before installing to add vista to the menu.