[arch-general] Wanted: advice dual-booting Arch and Windows 7 on new laptop

[Robbie Smith]

On 19/09/12 03:39, Martín Cigorraga wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:14 AM, Robbie Smith <zoqaeski at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone
>>
>> TL;DR: I've just bought a new HP Pavilion g6-2103ax, and I'm having
>> difficulties trying to figure out how I can dual-boot it with Windows 7
>> (which was preinstalled).
>>
>> Windows *still* defaults to using MBR partitions, and even though the
>> system is UEFI, HP have used some trickery somewhere to make it boot from
>> BIOS. To make matters worse, the disk table already has four partitions:
>>
>> SYSTEM: 199 MB NTFS
>> Windows C drive: ~ 450 GB NTFS
>> HP Recovery partition: 18.5 GB NTFS
>> HP_TOOLS: 99 MB FAT32
>>
>> The SYSTEM partition seems to contain the Windows bootloader, or something
>> along those lines. The HP Recovery partition contains the software
>> necessary to do a factory reset, and HP_TOOLS contains some UEFI
>> applications (some system diagnostic things). C drive is Windows.
>>
>> What I was thinking of doing was shrinking C drive, and deleting the
>> recovery partition to make space for Arch. But on my first attempt, parted
>> bricked the table, and whilst I was able to recover it, Windows refused to
>> boot. I obtained recovery disks to restore it, but they are completely
>> non-interactive so cannot be used to rescue Windows, only reset to factory
>> initial state.
>>
>> Due to the arrangement of the partitions, I don't think creating an
>> Extended partition will work (they need to be the last one in the table,
>> don't they?), and while I've read GRUB2 can use /boot in LVM, I'm not sure
>> whether this will work. Also, I've never used GRUB2 before, and its configs
>> look formidable compared to Syslinux. Ideally I'd switch to GPT, but
>> Windows needs to be booted in UEFI mode for this, but I have no idea how to
>> enable this as there's neither a switch in the BIOS settings, nor settings
>> in Windows.
>>
>> Can anyone advise me on how I could overcome these issues? Has anyone had
>> any experience with new HP g6 models?
>>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:14 AM, Robbie Smith <zoqaeski at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone
>>
>> TL;DR: I've just bought a new HP Pavilion g6-2103ax, and I'm having
>> difficulties trying to figure out how I can dual-boot it with Windows 7
>> (which was preinstalled).
>>
>> Windows *still* defaults to using MBR partitions, and even though the
>> system is UEFI, HP have used some trickery somewhere to make it boot from
>> BIOS. To make matters worse, the disk table already has four partitions:
>>
>> SYSTEM: 199 MB NTFS
>> Windows C drive: ~ 450 GB NTFS
>> HP Recovery partition: 18.5 GB NTFS
>> HP_TOOLS: 99 MB FAT32
>>
>> The SYSTEM partition seems to contain the Windows bootloader, or something
>> along those lines. The HP Recovery partition contains the software
>> necessary to do a factory reset, and HP_TOOLS contains some UEFI
>> applications (some system diagnostic things). C drive is Windows.
>>
>> What I was thinking of doing was shrinking C drive, and deleting the
>> recovery partition to make space for Arch. But on my first attempt, parted
>> bricked the table, and whilst I was able to recover it, Windows refused to
>> boot. I obtained recovery disks to restore it, but they are completely
>> non-interactive so cannot be used to rescue Windows, only reset to factory
>> initial state.
>>
>> Due to the arrangement of the partitions, I don't think creating an
>> Extended partition will work (they need to be the last one in the table,
>> don't they?), and while I've read GRUB2 can use /boot in LVM, I'm not sure
>> whether this will work. Also, I've never used GRUB2 before, and its configs
>> look formidable compared to Syslinux. Ideally I'd switch to GPT, but
>> Windows needs to be booted in UEFI mode for this, but I have no idea how to
>> enable this as there's neither a switch in the BIOS settings, nor settings
>> in Windows.
>>
>> Can anyone advise me on how I could overcome these issues? Has anyone had
>> any experience with new HP g6 models?
>>
>

Managed to get it all up and running, and added to the Laptops which run 
Arch thread on the forums. Should I add a section on the wiki on the 
steps I used? I haven't got an account there yet, but I guess it 
wouldn't hurt to have one.