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2015-08-21

Linuxes + windows 7

Goal: Multiboot with Windows 7, installed after linuxes.
I do not use Steam and - except maybe two-three games - linux-native gaming is crap. So after some 2,5 years I finally reinstalled OS for gaming.

First of all - it's enourmosly good to have two hdd-s. So You can keep MBR boot-sectors separately. Means - no worry of Windows overwriting your grub-parts.

What I did?
- changed boot order - to-be-windows-disk went to first in bios. That is - until usb-win-installer came to play...
I booted my win7 usb and installed. All finished in less than half an hour - with no lan, audio, or proper video drivers... Windows 7 is kinda oldish, and my box is kinda newish - so, no real surprise here.
Went to another machine (or - better to do it before), downloaded all shit from my motherboard manufacturer and added fresh nvidia driver. copy / unzip / install / reboot.
Downloaded usable browser (Pale Moon for me). Got essential things:
Classic shell, dexpot, linux reader, qttabbar, MS security essentials etc. Hacked various things in register.
At the same time - updated 200+ kb-s.
Do You want every KB? No? Make a choice - first, install all security updates. After that - check them ALL, every update is not needed (useless) and some of them are to avoid:
- 971033 (Windows Genuine Advantage - spy/telemetry for checking legalness of Your Windows, repeatedly);
- 949810 (the same for Your Office)
- 2505438 (not sure if it's still actual - but, the same, it checks Your licence.
- AND a bunch for upgrading to Windows 10: Can't say here anything very precise... but suspects are: 2951664, 2990214, 3021917, 3035583, 3065987, 3068708, 3075851.
I have my win7 totally legit ... but I don't want two things:
Spying for 'legitimacy' (check-process (they say) errs a lot, after what one has to whine+plead with MS support);
OR, 'upgrade to win10' - to OS what, in my opinion, is total 'be a bitch receiving it from behind, while singing your whole life-story'.
Whole process to get Win7 to OK shape took me markedly longer than, say, Slackware clean-install with all custom bells-and-whistles. Shrug.

Second phase - boot Windows from Grub.
- Rebooted from Windows, entered bios, changed boot order back to my grub-master hdd, rebooted to linux. Now, opened up /boot/grub.cfg and added entry to 40_custom section (change the following according to your hdd, of course).
menuentry "windows 7 pro (on /dev/sdc1)" --class windows --class os { 
 insmod part_msdos
 insmod ntfs
 set root='(hd2,msdos1)'
 chainloader +1
 }
If you want to be correct and/or You plan to use 'update-grub' or similar command that recreates grub.cfg, add the same entry to /etc/grub.d/40_custom.
Done.