Triple Booting Vista/XP/Ubuntu

Big Dan

I bought a new computer about 2 months ago and one of the first things I did was parititon and install Ubuntu. I ran Vista for a while as my default operating system and started to really like it but I couldn’t help but wonder how fast XP would run on this new computer. So, I decided to purchase an OEM copy of XP for it. I searched out all the drivers and installed XP. XP absolutely screams on this machine, I never seen XP move so fast.
Only one problem after about 2 weeks of running XP, I went to burn a DVD, there are no drivers for the DVD burner under XP. Funny it reads and recognizes CD’s and DVD’s but won’t write to them. That was a deal breaker for me. So, I formatted back to Vista then installed Ubuntu.
All is fine with that, I like Vista and I really like Ubuntu but I cannot get over the fact that I own a $100 copy of XP that I’m not using and cannot move to another computer because it’s OEM.
This evening I’ve decided to tackle the triple boot monster. Various how tos and none seem to be spot most have Dual boot XP or Vista & Ubuntu which is easy Ubuntu does all the work or dual boot XP & Vista which looks relatively easy. Other than that most seem to assume you have an original Vista disc instead of the retarded backup image you create and burn on your own so that makes things more of a challenge.
So far, I’m an hour into it. I’ve started the XP installer but on reboot there’s a disc read error. So I popped in the Ubuntu Live CD and am reinstalling Ubuntu with the hope the GRUB will detect both Vista & XP and allow me to complete the XP setup.. I’ll keep you posted


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Raven

Good luck.

yukon

Dan,

when I put new HDs into my rig a month or two ago I tri-booted it (xp64, xp32, fedora8-64). Basically your issue has to do with the differences between grub and whatever M$ uses for its boot loader. Order of operations:

Install lowest windblows first (xp) then Vista, it will auto-pickup XP and you can either upgrade or in your instance install another OS (it is HIGHLY advisable to use segregated partitions). Lastly (and this is where it gets interesting) Have Ubuntu reformat any NON-WINDOWS partitions and install itself to there.

Once you have that done and, you should be booting to grub. Grub should have 2 options one will be your Ubuntu, and the other will say something like "other" or winblows, etc. As far as I found in the brief research i did, grub can't *really* load a windows, windows needs to boot from its own equivalent (I think boot.ini). Trouble with that is, boot.ini is basically just another bootloader, it is passing specific non-grub compatible boot options to the windows kernel.

For example (again my current rig) I boot up to grub, I'm given three options:

1 - (default) most recent fedora64 bit kernel
2 - last (previous version) fedora64 kernel
3 - "Both winblows"

if I select 3, which I frequently do, I get a second menu, this one is the old standard windows dual boot menu that lets me choose either xp_pro32 or xp_pro64

***Your results may vary based on how you name things and the level of granularity you are allowed to configure to during the Ubuntu setup, but it should be pretty close

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Big Dan

Thanks Yukon.

I finally got it figured out using a program called EasyBCD. My main problem is I don't have a true Vista DVD just system restore discs I created from HP.

What I did was restore back to Vista, shrink Vista's partition and made 3 new partitions, one for XP, 1 for Swap and one for Ubuntu.

I then installed XP as normal on it's own partition. Since XP overwrote Vista's boot loader, I couldn't get back to Vista and since HP's system restore discs wouldn't create a new MBR for Vista I figured I was screwed until I found Vista Recovery CD which is basically a disk image that contains some Vista recovery tools. I burned the ISO, popped it in my drive and fixed Vista's MBR.

I then installed EasyBCD and created an entry for XP. Now at boot I can pick between Vista or XP.

Then I ran the Ubuntu install process and let it install GRUB which found Vista and gave it an entry.

Now, if I want to go into XP, I select Vista from the GRUB menu and then select XP from Vista's boot menu.

So I got it all working... and then I went back to dual booting Vista and Ubuntu I just had to prove that I could do it. :P

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