This tutorial will allow you to create a triple boot from a single boot screen using grub to boot into each OS individually. The beauty of this method is that there is no need to use the Vista boot screen menu, or the XP boot screen menu, but each os can be booted to directly. You will need a disk partitioner that you can boot into from a cd. For the purposes of this tutorial, I have used g-parted, an open source disk partitioner. (It can be downloaded here 49MB)
This tutorial assumes that you already know how to install the OS’s mentioned in the following tutorial, and that you have a working knowledge of how to partition a hard drive. The diagram of the partition scheme provided is a sample setup only, and can be tailored to suit your needs. Because of this, I have not given partition size recommendations as the sizes will vary depending on your hard drive.
Creating Partitions.
Boot into g-parted and do the following based on the diagram below:
Add first partition "NTFS" as a primary partition – this will be your Vista partition – (This partition needs to be the first partition.)
Add the second partition "NTFS" as a primary partition – This will be your XP partition.
Add your third partition "EXT3" as an extended partition– This will be your Linux partition
Add your fourth partition "Linux Swap" as an extended partition– (This will be your Linux swap partition and should be around 5-10gbs)
Add a fifth partition "Fat32" as a primary partition– this will be a shared partition between all OS’S (I used this as an example only, you can also make this NTFS is you are using NTFS-3G in Linux to share NTFS partitions)
Installing OS
First Install Windows XP on 2nd NTFS primary partition.
Boot into G-Parted, select XP partition and hide it. (This is a most important step as it will fool Vista into installing boot files on Vista partition, not the XP partition. It will avoid having to use the Vista boot screen menu for Vista and XP.)
Install Vista next, on 1st NTFS primary partition.
Boot into G-Parted and select XP partition and unhide it. Then Format Last FAT32 partition
Install Linux, and choose to manually partition your disks. (Select the EXT3 extended 3rd partition as the root mount point / then select the 4th smaller extended partition as mount point /swap.)
Install grub to hdd,0 (Do not install grub to one of the partitions, but install it to the MBR (Master Boot Record))
After Linux installation, Grub should have detected your Vista and XP OS’s, and you should now have a working triple boot.
Troubleshooting
If for some reason GRUB has not recognized XP and Vista, and based on the partition scheme I have used, you can add the following to the end of your GRUB configuration file.
title Windows Vista/Longhorn
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
chainloader +1
This tutorial assumes that you already know how to install the OS’s mentioned in the following tutorial, and that you have a working knowledge of how to partition a hard drive. The diagram of the partition scheme provided is a sample setup only, and can be tailored to suit your needs. Because of this, I have not given partition size recommendations as the sizes will vary depending on your hard drive.
Creating Partitions.
Boot into g-parted and do the following based on the diagram below:
Add first partition "NTFS" as a primary partition – this will be your Vista partition – (This partition needs to be the first partition.)
Add the second partition "NTFS" as a primary partition – This will be your XP partition.
Add your third partition "EXT3" as an extended partition– This will be your Linux partition
Add your fourth partition "Linux Swap" as an extended partition– (This will be your Linux swap partition and should be around 5-10gbs)
Add a fifth partition "Fat32" as a primary partition– this will be a shared partition between all OS’S (I used this as an example only, you can also make this NTFS is you are using NTFS-3G in Linux to share NTFS partitions)
Installing OS
First Install Windows XP on 2nd NTFS primary partition.
Boot into G-Parted, select XP partition and hide it. (This is a most important step as it will fool Vista into installing boot files on Vista partition, not the XP partition. It will avoid having to use the Vista boot screen menu for Vista and XP.)
Install Vista next, on 1st NTFS primary partition.
Boot into G-Parted and select XP partition and unhide it. Then Format Last FAT32 partition
Install Linux, and choose to manually partition your disks. (Select the EXT3 extended 3rd partition as the root mount point / then select the 4th smaller extended partition as mount point /swap.)
Install grub to hdd,0 (Do not install grub to one of the partitions, but install it to the MBR (Master Boot Record))
After Linux installation, Grub should have detected your Vista and XP OS’s, and you should now have a working triple boot.
Troubleshooting
If for some reason GRUB has not recognized XP and Vista, and based on the partition scheme I have used, you can add the following to the end of your GRUB configuration file.
title Windows Vista/Longhorn
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
chainloader +1
