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Hello. I setup Arch on a second partition and installed everything and installed grub on my root partition, but when I rebooted the system, I wasnt given a boot menu.. it Just defaulted to windows. Heres my setup:
/dev/sda1 Windows
/dev/sda2 Swap
/dev/sda3 Root
Now.. I didnt flag Root as bootable and Im thinking thats it.. is it? and there was one other thing.. in my /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst file.. I edited the windows XP entry as such:
# Windows XP
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
there was a line "makeactive" inbetweee rootoverify ad chainloader.. that wasnt part of the wiki so i deleted it.. is there something else im missing?
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Did you install GRUB to MBR or a partition? It needs to be in the MBR to work.
Alternatively, you can use winfailure's boot.ini file to specify that you want to chainload from NTLDR to GRUB, which will work, but you'll need to know exactly where you installed GRUB to do that method.
Also, you were wise to remove that "makeactive" - that'd set the winfailure partition to bootable, negating GRUB on futher boots.
Lastly, GRUB doesn't require that disks be made "active" - the GRUB MBR code is "hardwired" with what partition to chainload to, it's a smart little application.
-dav7
Windows was made for looking at success from a distance through a wall of oversimplicity. Linux removes the wall, so you can just walk up to success and make it your own.
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Grub doesn't HAVE to be on the mbr, although thats usually the simplist option. If you want to keep grub on your root partition then you need to swap the boot flag from the windows partition to the arch root partition.
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So if I make Arch bootable and make windows non bootable, I will be able to choose which one to boot into? And this wont screw with windows? I need to keep my windows partition
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So if I make Arch bootable and make windows non bootable, I will be able to choose which one to boot into? And this wont screw with windows? I need to keep my windows partition
Correct. The boot flag is basically a signal to the BIOS to tell it where to go next to continue the boot process, it won't harm windows if its partition doesn't have the boot flag.
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Awsome.. and I kinda learned That one the hard way lol.. I went into arch live setup, and I flagged /root as bootable, but windows was still flagged boot.. it said improper partition table but i didnt think it wrote it.. tried to reboot windows hrs later.. and it wouldnt boot! I almost fainted.. But I remembered I did something in Arch Live so I went in and apparantly it Wrote the partition table, so I deflagged /root and it fixed it.. But thanks! Ill do that so I can start setting up arch.
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Actually my windows partition is set to bootable and my arch is not.
also it has the makeactive option in grub, but everything works fine ( Grub in MBR)
I think the bios look first in the MBR to know what to boot from.
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