diff --git a/hw/arm/boot.c b/hw/arm/boot.c
index 5ddba727d4..a0e1110719 100644
--- a/hw/arm/boot.c
+++ b/hw/arm/boot.c
@@ -1000,20 +1000,6 @@ static void arm_setup_direct_kernel_boot(ARMCPU *cpu,
     if (info->nb_cpus == 0)
         info->nb_cpus = 1;
 
-    /*
-     * We want to put the initrd far enough into RAM that when the
-     * kernel is uncompressed it will not clobber the initrd. However
-     * on boards without much RAM we must ensure that we still leave
-     * enough room for a decent sized initrd, and on boards with large
-     * amounts of RAM we must avoid the initrd being so far up in RAM
-     * that it is outside lowmem and inaccessible to the kernel.
-     * So for boards with less  than 256MB of RAM we put the initrd
-     * halfway into RAM, and for boards with 256MB of RAM or more we put
-     * the initrd at 128MB.
-     */
-    info->initrd_start = info->loader_start +
-        MIN(info->ram_size / 2, 128 * 1024 * 1024);
-
     /* Assume that raw images are linux kernels, and ELF images are not.  */
     kernel_size = arm_load_elf(info, &elf_entry, &elf_low_addr,
                                &elf_high_addr, elf_machine, as);
@@ -1065,6 +1051,26 @@ static void arm_setup_direct_kernel_boot(ARMCPU *cpu,
     }
 
     info->entry = entry;
+
+    /*
+     * We want to put the initrd far enough into RAM that when the
+     * kernel is uncompressed it will not clobber the initrd. However
+     * on boards without much RAM we must ensure that we still leave
+     * enough room for a decent sized initrd, and on boards with large
+     * amounts of RAM we must avoid the initrd being so far up in RAM
+     * that it is outside lowmem and inaccessible to the kernel.
+     * So for boards with less  than 256MB of RAM we put the initrd
+     * halfway into RAM, and for boards with 256MB of RAM or more we put
+     * the initrd at 128MB.
+     * We also refuse to put the initrd somewhere that will definitely
+     * overlay the kernel we just loaded, though for kernel formats which
+     * don't tell us their exact size (eg self-decompressing 32-bit kernels)
+     * we might still make a bad choice here.
+     */
+    info->initrd_start = info->loader_start +
+        MAX(MIN(info->ram_size / 2, 128 * 1024 * 1024), kernel_size);
+    info->initrd_start = TARGET_PAGE_ALIGN(info->initrd_start);
+
     if (is_linux) {
         uint32_t fixupcontext[FIXUP_MAX];