Installing CentOS 7.1 Dual Boot With Windows 8.1 on UEFI Firmware Systems

10. Now it’s time to manually partition your disk. If you already have Windows OS installed on your machine, then you will notice that some partitions are already present on your partition table as illustrated on the below screenshots.

Important: Do not touch or alter those partitions in any way. In exchange you will use the free space from your hard disk to create the Linux partitions. For this guide we will configure three partitions for the system in the following manner:

1. Swap partition – double size of your RAM Memory – no mount point.
2. Root partition – at least 10 GB – mount point / – Standard partition type – Formatted XFS
3. Home partition – the rest of space – mount point /home – – Standard partition type – Formatted XFS

11. First create the swap partition by hitting the below plus (+) button, choose swap as Mount Point with the space value for this partition, then hit Add mount point as presented on the below screenshot.

12. Then, create the root partition by hitting the plus button again with / as a mount point and at least 10 GB space. Hit Add mount point, then, from the right menu choose Standard Partition.

13. Repeat the same steps as above to create the /home partition with the left free space (leave the Desired Capacity value empty in order to use all the remained free space).

Don’t worry about the /boot/efi partition, because it will be added automatically to your partition table.

14. Once you finish with configuring the partitions, hit the above Done button, review your new partition table and Accept Changes from the pop-up warning window in order to proceed further with the last installation settings.

15. Once you’re back to the main installer screen, hit the Kdump menu and uncheck the Enable kdump feature. Hit Done to apply settings and go back to main screen.

16. On the next step configure your Network and Hostname. Choose a descriptive name for your machine Host name (you can type use a FQDN name). If you want to set up your Network Interface with static IP configurations, hit the below Configure button, go to IPv4 Settings tab, select Manual and enter your network IP addresses.

When you’re done hit the Save button, switch the Ethernet to ON, then hit above Done button to go back to the main screen. The following screenshots illustrates this steps.

17. Now it’s time to install the system. Hit the below Begin Installation button from the Installation Summary screen and a new screen with User Settings should appear.

From this point on the installation procedure is automatically started and can’t be reverted. Select the Root Password menu and enter your system root password twice. Hit Done when you finish to go back and create the first user.

18. The last setting of User Creation is optional. If you want to create a user, then hit the User Creation menu and enter the username and the password for this new user.

Check the Make this user administrator box if you want to add root privileges for this user and, also, check the Require a password to use this account box for extra security. As soon as you finish, hit the Done button to go back to the main screen and wait for the installer to complete.

19. Now you’re almost done. Once the installation process finishes, Reboot the system, choose CentOS from the Grub menu (you will notice that Windows Boot Loader is also present here), hit the License Information menu and check the I accept the license agreement box. Hit Done to go back and Finish Configuration button.

20. That’s all! Now, Sign in to CentOS system with the new user credentials created during the installation process and you’re done. To view CentOS release version, open a Terminal and issue the following command:

$ cat /etc/centos-release

Also, make sure your system is up-to-date by issuing the following command:

$ sudo yum upgrade

21. CentOS 7 has no default support for NTFS filesystem. In order to be able to mount and access Windows NTFS partitions, add the Epel repositories package to CentOS and install the ntfs-3g package by issuing the below commands:

$ sudo yum install epel-release
$ sudo yum upgrade
$ sudo yum install ntfs-3g

23. After installing ntfs-3g, you can mount your Windows NTFS partitions using following command.

$ sudo mount -ro ntfs-3g /dev/sda5 /mnt
$ cd /mnt
$ ls -l

Where /dev/sda5 is the my default Windows Partition, in your case the drive may be different..

Enjoy CentOS 7.1 in dual-boot with Windows 8.1 on your machine. To switch back to Windows Operating System, reboot the machine and choose Windows Boot Manager from the Grub menu.