Dual Booting Arch/Windows - Windows sets self as active partition?

Question

First time Arch install, though technically I've done it about 3 times in the last couple days :0)

Trying to dual boot with an existing Windows 7 partition, which is almost working, with one small caveat. I've been following the process on this page in the Arch wiki and my partitions are pretty much laid out as described in the article:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Windows_and_Arch_Dual_Boot

Grub isn't loaded on the MBR, but it's installed to the /boot partition which I have set as the "active" partition. This works.

But, after I boot Windows 7, subsequent boots go directly to Windows since it seems to set itself as the active partition. Has anyone else experienced this, or know how to resolve?

Thanks!

Answer 1

In Windows, use bcdedit (requires UAC-elevated admin) to

REM This will output a GUID, {long-string-of-hex-characters}
bcdedit /create /d GRUB /application BOOTSECTOR

REM Now, assuming you've copied GRUB's stage1 to C:\grub.bin
bcdedit /set {GUID} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set {GUID} path \grub.bin

REM Make it selectable in the WINLOAD menu
bcdedit /displayorder {GUID} /addlast

The GRUB stage1 can usually be found in a file in your Linux system as /lib/grub/i386-pc/stage1 or similar; it will also be the first 512 bytes of the partition you installed GRUB to, if you did not install to MBR.