Triple booting XP-7-Ubuntu 12.04 using single boot screen

S

sangeetha.r44

Novice
Hi,

I found many articles/guides on triple booting Win 7, Win XP and Ubuntu 12.04with a single boot menu and i just could not get it working on my system. I could only get grub2 menu with Ubuntu and Win 7 boot loader, with Win 7 bootloader again giving an option of entering either Win7 system or Win XP, but not all the three OS's on a single menu.

I have the following partitions on my 1TB single HDD:
C: Win XP - Primary, 80 GB
D: Win 7 - Primary, 80 GB
E: Ubuntu 12.04, Primary, 25 GB
F: NTFS data partition, Logical, 350 GB
G: NTFS data partition, Logical, 350 GB

I tried installing XP first, then taking off boot flag on C drive using gparted, then installing Win 7, then again taking off boot flag on drive D using gparted and finally installing Ubuntu. I tried trial and error methods and i just could not get it to work and i gave up. Also i would prefer using GRUB2 menu, since i plan to install BURG bootloader. Any help is grreatly appreciated. Thanks in Advance.
 
Actually, i did look for information on adding XP entry to GRUB, but since ubuntu 12.04 had GRUB2 i didnt find menu.lst file, so i couldnt proceed further. Since BURG had very good menu i thought it would add an XP entry. When i installed BURG through Superboot Manager, even BURG couldnt recognize XP entry. Any advice on how to add XP entry in GRUB2?
 
Well ... you could also use virtualization and then no need for having multiple OSes ruining your bootloader... no more OS eating up more hdd space than needed ... just need to ensure that the system has enough RAM to support all your OSes
 
systembuilder said:
Well ... you could also use virtualization and then no need for having multiple OSes ruining your bootloader... no more OS eating up more hdd space than needed ... just need to ensure that the system has enough RAM to support all your OSes
Click to expand...

Actually, i am very keen on installing ubuntu directly than running it on Windows. I will try virtual OS though sometime. Thank you.
 
IIRC, Ubuntu offers 'WUBI' as an option, which creates a big file on the windows partition that is considered by Ubuntu as a 'virtual' partition. Ubuntu can then be booted with the Windows boot-loader.

I'm pretty sure WUBI is compatible with WinXP, you'll have to research to see if Win7 is also compatible.
 
I have no experience in triple boot, but do use Ubuntu 10.04 + XP dual boot.
For me, whenever I reinstall Ubuntu, the grub menu loses the XP entry.
A simple way I use is to open terminal in Ubuntu and type the following command to auto-update grub menu with the available OSes:


Code: 
sudo update-grub

Hope this helps!
Cheers!!
 
You don't need to, and shouldn't, change the boot flags.
Just install XP, then 7 and finally Ubuntu.
As long as your boot partition remains unchanged, you shouldn't have a problem.
I don't know if Ubuntu comes with NTFS write support out of the box. If it does, then you shouldn't have a problem. If it doesn't, then install XP on a FAT32 partition.
Thats what I did when I had a multi-boot system running Windows 8+ XP + CentOS + Ubuntu + Fedora. I never had a problem with the BURG not recognizing the OS's, and I didn't tinker with anything. But I installed XP first, on a FAT32 partition. (then 8, CentOS, Fedora and finally Ubuntu)
 
I am also planning to triple boot - XP, Win7, Ubuntu 10.04...
But my scenario is a bit different, I already have XP and Ubuntu dual boot (Grub 1.98) in one 500GB HDD and have a 80GB HDD in spare...
Will it be correct to disconnect the 500GB and install Win7 on 80GB, then update grub menu?

Thanks in advance!
 
^^ It will be absolutely Ok, but you need to assign your 500GB higher boot priority than the 80GB HDD in which you have installed Win7.
 
d6bmg said:
^^ It will be absolutely Ok, but you need to assign your 500GB higher boot priority than the 80GB HDD in which you have installed Win7.
Click to expand...

Have the same priority setting at present.
Great...will be clearing the data from the 80GB HDD and proceed this weekend!
 
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