I dont know what to do anymore. First let me start off with I am familiar with cfdisk. So I was like yea I am leaving outta here gone back to the linux world. I have problems with some other distros but I refuse to install unbuntu so after doing some reading i realized Arh is exactly what I wanted. The first thing I noticed was the format of the installation was a bit different. So I fire it up load and begin my partions. I had a windows 7 partion which i swear better not come back to haunt me. I saw a video of a guy installing a fresh arch linux I thought it looked good. He made more partions that I am usually use to when trying to run linux. He made 3 a boot/swap/root partion I've never made more than two because I am single system user and seeing as how I want it to be my primary operating system.

Anyway I guess some background information I have 250g hardrive 3 gigs of Ram. He was using 200mb for the boot 512 for the ram he only had 2gigs and a 20gig for the remainder for his linux. Seems straight forward. However I don't know what happened but I guess I was tired or something. But at some point I made a mistake. When I was targeting the partion I saw like multiple copies of each one.
so it would be like
along with i guess some default things up here.
hda1/raw
hda1/raw
hda2/raw
hda2/raw
hda3/raw
hda3/raw

So the installation basically failed. It was saying there were pre-existing swaps and multiple ones. I have no idea idea what is going on. I even got sick and tired and went with the auto-format way it somehow was still picking up other things like I was seeing it deleted. This way also wanted to make another partion mib for 7gigs I dont know what the mib does? is it equvalent to the var or tmp folders i guess? I have lost so much sleep over this. At one point I got all the way to installing drivers but I was not happy with everything and I attempted to format and start new again which is basically where I am. Please advice.

Thanks I am wondering if its because I used a snapshot thinking about it. I used yesterdays.

SOLVED apparently my friend who gave me the arch CD did not realize I had a 64bit laptop.

Glad you've solved your problem

Could you mark the thread as 'SOLVED' please, so people know the thread contains a solution? Thanks

Glad you got it working also. Arch installs can be "fun" sometimes. But I would think you could install a 32bit distro on a 64bit cpu...

No matter. Have fun.

I guess I'll use this for a new question. I have problems with the Arch Linux Partioning. I don't want to auto-format. That works but that is not what I want to use. Also after just making it run the auto-install basically lol it did not install the De. I must have missed it in the installation. Furtunetly its on a VM so its not really a big deal. But I want to get this down perfectly before I put my hardrive on the line again.

Arch doesn't come with a Desktop Enviroment. You install what you want. You'll need to get X running first.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/X
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Window_Manager
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...op_Environment
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...allation_Guide
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=arch+linux

The process of manually partitioning a drive for a Linux install using fdisk or the like is pretty standard. It offers you customization options as you allude to, and also demonstrates your familiarity with very important theory and techniques.

As to the "auto-install" you refer to, that process would never install a DE. If you had read the guide you would have understood about installing a GUI.

My approach was to just follow the guide, and jump off in the wiki as it directed me. IMO, Arch doc is sufficiently complete to accomplish about anything.

Have fun
steve.

For those who are not familiar with fdisk, cfdisk just use PartedMagic live cd and go for the point & click approach with gparted before installing Arch and just mount these newly created partitions during installation

well I have a new question and seeing as how it seems like I was the only person to ever have a question i'll post it here. I am currently running a dual boot with windows 7 ultimate and a xunbuntu I am in love with XFCE . Anyway I am wondering could I simply format over my 40gig linux partiion and install arch will it update my boot loader without me having to re-instal windows or something dumb.

Yes, without having to re-instal windows or something dumb.
By default Arch installs the easy old grub (not grub2 by default) and it finds "That Other OS", and one of the last steps with Arch is that you check/edit your grub.cfg before the bootloader gets installed.

If you come to the point of partitions you don't need to create partitions just go to the option about mountpoints and re-format that 40GiB partition and your swap and mount it for installation

i have a problem before I even breathe I am consulting you guys this did not seem to be covered in the step by step guide. So after I formatted out the hardrive since I had a dual boot system windows now does not load. Seeing as how I had it with grub boot loader. Did not really think about it at the time. So now I see my partion are intact for windows which is fine. However I am unable to make more primary partitions I present have 2 due to windows. /dev/sda1 "system reserve" which window made 100mib, the unallocated 39.90 gig which is what I want to use and the /dev/sda3 which is my windows partition that I can not use presently. I am thinking of making my root scheme this. 200mb boot, 512mb swap, and the rest of the 40gigs to home. However I can't do this. I can't seem to change it to anything that would enable me to do this. I did ex2, -3, 4, ect none of them seem to make me be able to create what I want. Crying out in the wilderness here. I have went over the installation many times it seems so straight forward that I should not even remotely be struggling like this.

You have to remove the Primary sda3 linux partition and then create an Extended partition this will become your last hidden Primary system partition within this parition you can create many more Extended partitions starting from sda5,sda6,sda7 etc

So this is what happened just as I said. I panicked and wondered if everything was gone despite me seeing the partions do I experimented and put in kunbuntu to use the k-partions tool to try and manipulate it I saw my drives and everything was in tact. I panicked and tried to manually select the drive I want to see if it would restore my windows by adding a grub boot loader or just some how just go over everything it worked out. With this safety net in mind I am at peace I just did not lose all my things and projects I was working on. Now that being said. Everything works again exception now it's kunbuntu on the other partion I want to do the exact same thing but have arch Linux instead. I am assuming it has grub. So when I install it my windows side would still be intact. Despite how I love linux only hdmi support with TV's is just not the same as is on windows yet. I know the arch Linux documenting is excellent but I don't see my specific situation that's why I keep coming to you guys.

-Thanks

You should be able to do this through the Arch installer relatively easily - just select the Kubuntu partition as the root for Arch. However, you don't seem to be that confident with manipulating partitions etc., so my advice is that (and I can't stress this enough) YOU MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE DOING ANYTHING. You have your hard drive in a state with which you are (relatively) happy, so back it up before you try to install Arch.

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I have a encountered a problem. I understand computers very well despite my fears about linux. While the partions where made for the kunbuntu I realized I had made a mistake so I easily fixed and resized the 2nd partion to be what it as suppose to be in windows. So basically this is the layout. I got the windows required partions. so that's system reserve, windows, it has 1 more I think. I have 42gigs FREE for linux. When I do the partions there is a total of 6 because windows being windows uses 3. I just want to use 200mb boot , 512 swap and the rest for linux. which works out to like 40gigs I guess. Now what happens is when I am targeting my partions hda4 which should be my linux /home does not show. I know I only can have 4 primary so I run it as my 200mb boot as primary if I do a logical for a swap and a 40gig primary for a /home it does not show.

What you have and need is something like this:
sda 1-3 can be in different order!
The easiest and safest way to setup your partition before installing Arch is to set this up with PartedMagic's; GParted.
Gparted allows you also to safely resize your C:\ drive to make more room for linux if you like.