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My ASRock330 should be arriving tomorrow. And I will want to be using XBMCLive on it. I don't have a memstick yet so I can't run it from there, but I would like to be able to boot XBMCLive from the HDD for now. I also want to put XP on it.

1) Do I need to have XBMCLive on a separate partition of the (320GB) hdd?

2) I've read that I need to create a GRUB menu to choose between XP and XBMCLive, does anyone know how to do this?

3) Presumably the GRUB menu requires user input (keyboard) to choose which thing to boot, but Im looking for a solution that needs no keyboard of mouse plugged in. (I plan to use a wiimote for windows). Is there a way of having the system boot XBMC unless i specifically choose to run XP? (I suppose using a usb remote at the grub menu is not on the cards).

4) When I do eventually get a memstick, I would like the ASRock to load XBMCLive from power-on, and if that stick is not present at boot, it would just boot XP. Is this possible?

5) To start off on the good foot, I want to flash the bios to get the quietest fan. Is there any danger to doing this? Would it void my warranty? Would you recommend it as one of the first things I do once I've got this box? Where do I get the newest bios?

6) 24p video. I read that in order to get xbmcLive to run at 24Hz you need to boot it into ubuntu/linux and set it that way? Is that the only way of doing it, because i dont have ubuntu at the moment.


I'm looking forward to having xbmclive hibernate/suspend and then using the remote to wake-on-usb Im hoping I can do something similar in windows and have xbmc kick back in when i do the fancy 4-second boot thing. (ile have another xbmc setup in winXP using launchplayer hopefully).


Looking forward to getting this box set up, greatful if anyone can help me with these preliminary steps.

Last time I looked you couldn't dual boot XP with XBMC Live from the hard drive because XBMC Live formats the whole drive before installing ,you would have to install XP then do a minimal install of XBMC not XBMC Live

Your best option is buy a USB stick and not bother trying to dual boot of the Hard drive then you can do what you said make USB stick first boot device booting Live and HDD second boot device booting XP that way when the stick is in it boots Live and when out XP