So, this is a short story telling about the journey of an arch linux installation on an HP 2530p.
The mission was clear, GPT, LVM and LUKS. The problem was the BIOS in the HP 2530p.
To keep it short, don't trust the documents, simple install a hybrid gpt/mbr), or follow my howto.
The so called documented UEFI boot is only working with windows but not with other UEFI systems. If you simple install a GPT without a hybrid MBR, you won't get a working system disk.
Since the capacity of usb sticks are raising and raising, it would be a perfect deal to have "one usb stick for all live operation systems".
For that reason, the boys and girls from sardu have created a beautiful windows tool for you. It is so simple and quite powerful that you just need to download, use and donate to it!
Grub, the grand unified bootloader is out in its second version (for quiet a while) and a lot has changed. Today was the first day where i have to deal with the new version, so it is time to write down the knowledge i earned :-).
After upgrading from windows xp to windows 7, the microsoft os acts as child and replace the grub with its one boodloader. So at this point nothing changes from xp to litle seven ;-). My task was to restor the grub 2 into the mbr to regain access to my lovely linux.
After reading some howto's, i tried it with by doing the lazy way.
Start a linux live cd (or a live cd with an grub 2)
fdisk -l (to see what partitions and disk are there and find your linux/root partition
mount /dev/$linuxdisk$linuxpartition (e.g. sda2) /mnt
Nothing to explain left for this task. But what if you want to adjust the grub? There are two screws for twisting on. First the file /etc/default/grub contains a lot of general settings. Second, the files in /etc/grub.d/ representing your boot options. Just take a look into the scripts, the help ans answeres are in there.
So the problem is to restore the mbr without having a windows xp cd.
It is also possible that you windows xp cd has a problem with your sata device ;-).