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#1 2009-11-21 13:01:34

cake
Member
Registered: 2009-11-21
Posts: 8

[SOLVED] Windows/Arch dual boot - which partition set to bootable?

Firstly; I'm slightly worried that I may be breaking rules here by posting. I have, however, been reading wikis and threads for the past couple of weeks in preparation for the switch from Ubuntu to Arch. Do rest assured that I wouldn't post without searching beforehand. Don't hate.

I've got a perfectly good Windows XP partition at sda1, which is set to bootable in cfdisk. Moreover, there's another bootable partition at sda2 which contains the Ubuntu /. I've been removing all Ubuntu-related partitions and adding new ones according to the wiki, but I'm confused as to which partition should be set as bootable - cfdisk will only let me have one partition with the boot flag.
I'm thinking, if I remove the flag from the Windows partition, well, that's probably not a good idea, and leaving Arch partitions without a boot flag will probably render Arch unbootable. How do I go about creating a partition with the boot flag alongside the Windows one?

Thanks in advance.

Last edited by cake (2009-11-22 09:57:00)

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#2 2009-11-21 13:04:50

Mr.Elendig
#archlinux@freenode channel op
From: The intertubes
Registered: 2004-11-07
Posts: 4,092

Re: [SOLVED] Windows/Arch dual boot - which partition set to bootable?

Set the boot flag on the windows partion, and install grub to mbr (/dev/sda) and chainload ntldr from grub. (rootnoverify (hd0,0); chainloader +1)


Evil #archlinux@libera.chat channel op and general support dude.
. files on github, Screenshots, Random pics and the rest

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#3 2009-11-21 13:11:22

cake
Member
Registered: 2009-11-21
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Windows/Arch dual boot - which partition set to bootable?

Mr.Elendig wrote:

Set the boot flag on the windows partion, and install grub to mbr (/dev/sda) and chainload ntldr from grub. (rootnoverify (hd0,0); chainloader +1)

Thank you. I'll keep fingers crossed that nothing else comes up that I can't solve, but should that happen - do the forums want me to create new threads or continue here?

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#4 2009-11-21 13:27:49

jelly
Administrator
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2008-06-10
Posts: 714

Re: [SOLVED] Windows/Arch dual boot - which partition set to bootable?

cake wrote:
Mr.Elendig wrote:

Set the boot flag on the windows partion, and install grub to mbr (/dev/sda) and chainload ntldr from grub. (rootnoverify (hd0,0); chainloader +1)

Thank you. I'll keep fingers crossed that nothing else comes up that I can't solve, but should that happen - do the forums want me to create new threads or continue here?

Change the title, if your system doesnt boot check for grub errors and google how to fix them.
Else read the fine wiki http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Win … _Dual_Boot

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#5 2009-11-21 14:39:06

shak
Member
Registered: 2009-03-16
Posts: 405

Re: [SOLVED] Windows/Arch dual boot - which partition set to bootable?

Leave the windows partition bootable and install grub in /dev/sda . Uncomment the nessecary lines in grub menu (for windows) and also keep in mind the 4 primary partitions limitation .

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#6 2009-11-21 14:47:14

cake
Member
Registered: 2009-11-21
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Windows/Arch dual boot - which partition set to bootable?

Thank you, everyone, it worked fine. I haven't tried booting into Windows yet, I'll change the topic to solved as soon as I make sure it all works.

edit: Yup.

Last edited by cake (2009-11-22 09:56:39)

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#7 2009-11-23 16:53:18

perbh
Member
From: Republic of Texas
Registered: 2005-03-04
Posts: 765

Re: [SOLVED] Windows/Arch dual boot - which partition set to bootable?

grub doesn't care about whether or not a partition has the boot-flag set. The dos-loader does - it checks the four primary partitions and makes sure that only one is 'active', then it transfers control to that partition.
When you install grub on the mbr (ie grub will boot both windows and linux), then you dont need any active partitions at all!

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