[gentoo-user] Dual Boot Partitions

[dhk]

I have a new laptop that I need to set up for dual booting.  As much as
I despise Microsoft, I have to use it for certain things.  Such as some
obscure peripherals, like my slide photo scanner, it doesn't support
Linux and TD Ameritrade's streaming Java tools don't work the same as on
Linux.  Until corporation's smarten up Microsoft will be a problem.

The setup for dual booting seem pretty straight forward.  Install
windows first, then Linux, and modify the boot loader.  However, I have
a couple of question and observations.

First, the observations.  I tried to partition my disk with fdisk the
way I wanted.  It had the usual Linux partitions and a partition that I
was going to use for Window 7.  I wanted to make this an LVM2 partition,
but that didn't work; I guess that was too ambitious.  Then I just made
it an ordinary static HPFS/NTFS partition on /dev/sda5.  When installing
Windows 7 it wouldn't install on that partition.  I deleted all the
partitions and just installed it on the first 50Gigs of the disk.

Second, the questions.  The Windows 7 install on the first 50Gigs of the
disk needed to created two partitions.  The first was a very small boot
partition that I increased to 128Megs, and the second is the rest of
Windows 7.  Now when I boot to the livecd to partition the rest of the
disk for Gentoo fdisk says "Partition 1 does not end on a cylinder
boundary."  Is this a problem?  The other big question is:  what do I do
about the first partition in the partition table?  It is an HPFS/NTFS
partition and has been toggled bootable.  It also has some stuff in it
that looks like it's important to Windows:  a BOOTSECT.BAK file, a Boot
directory, a System Volume Information directory, and a bootmgr file.
Now for my Gentoo install, how and where do I make a /boot partition?
Do I replace the Windows 7 boot partition with /boot?  If so, what
happens to the contents?  or Do I make a /boot partition on /dev/sda3
and toggle the bootable flag there?

I apologize for the long story.  Thanks in advance for all the help.

dhk