Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Video IM, Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and various bits of hardware new and old.
Tuesday 17 June 2008, 2:49 PM
Triple Boot Ubuntu/Vista/XP - No Go So Far
My brother gave me what should have been a good tip, when he suggested using Acronis True Image to back up my running XP partition, and then restore that to the second partition of the new drive. Rather than do exactly that, though, I also have Acronis Disk Director Suite, which knows how to copy partitions, so I figured I would use that to copy my current XP partition onto the new disk.
Unfortunately, try as I might, I couldn't get it to work. It was tedious to get the partition copied, because Disk Director seemed to have a very different idea than I did about where it was going to make the copy to, and where it would get the necessary free space from. Once I got it copied, it would not boot. One of the more amusing permutations was when I first installed Vista, then copied XP into the next partition, and finally installed Ubuntu into the third partition. Ubuntu (Grub) correctly saw that there were two bootable Windows partitions on the disk, and both Vista and Ubuntu booted correctly, but when I tried to boot the XP partition, it actually started to boot Vista but then complained that the boot info was corrupt, and asked if I wanted Vista to fix it for me. Sigh.
Having read most everything I could find on this subject on the web, I think a major part of the problem might be the fact that my Vista and XP partitions both think that they have been installed in C:, so whichever one of them is actually not in the first partition on the disk still tries to use that partition when it boots, and that causes confusion and failure.
I suspect that if I had actual Windows install media, rather than these limited "recovery" disks, I would have more success. Maybe. I'm not done trying yet, though...
jw 17/6/2008
PreviousComments on this post
If I understand correctly, Vista must boot from it's own boot loader, but said boot loader will load other systems. Hence Vista must be on the first partition and installed subsequent to XP on the second partition, and quite possibly other OS's on further partitions.
Vista can boot Linux and this is made easy by the EasyBCD programme. There may be a problem booting an OS on a second hard drive, I'm not sure.
On my own experience this works as long as you have a means of installing Vista last to the first partition without interfering with the previous installations other than to overwrite the MBR etc. It is important to create the partitions first using apprporiate software in order to install into the selected partions.
In this way you boot all the OS's from the Vista boot loader, not from GRUB.
It may be also possible to install the OS's in a different order and then recover the Vista boot loader, for instance, using a late Vista Beta installation disk or a borrowed retail or OEM Vista installation disk, this I have also done in order to dual boot Ubuntu installed after Vista.
Hope these meanderings are some help.
That said, I have abandonned Vista and reverted to XP and, currently, I'm not tempted back to Vista. I'm enjoying Ubuntu as my second OS as I'm still, unfortunately, tied into XP
Thanks for the comments, Moley, and it was indeed helpful.
My experience has been a bit different, in that I had no trouble getting GRUB to boot Vista, when I installed VIsta first and then Ubuntu. GRUB even shows that it knows the Vista boot is "special", because when I do it with XP Pro, the GRUB boot menu only lists "Microsoft Windows XP Professional", whereas when I did it with Vista, the menu says "Microsoft Windows Vista (loader)".
On the other hand, my experience has been the same as yours, in that I am perfectly happy with Ubuntu/XP dual boot, I only wanted to add the Vista boot for the "gee whiz" factor, and so that I would have Vista available if/when I wanted to test specific programs or features with it, or in case MS comes out with some significant new patches that might make it work better and more reliably on my S6510.
So, my current plan is, since I have two identical disks for the S6510, I will now set up one XP/Ubuntu and the other Vista/Ubuntu.
jw
Moley, I've just set up a dual-boot Vista/Ubuntu disk from scratch, and confirmed what I said previously. I loaded Vista first, then Ubuntu; GRUB recognized the Vista partition and set it up to boot, using the Vista boot loader, and added an entry to the boot menu saying
Windows Vista/Longhorn (loader)
I subsequently booted both Vista and Ubuntu, and confirmed that they came up properly.
Just for info...
Thanks for your comments.
I have the feeling now that some my comments were half baked. I finally installed XP as my main OS as a Christmas present to myself so it's over 6 months since I tried all the double and triple boot scenarios and even an attempted quadruple booting scenario with Vista, XP, Ubuntu and SuSe.
I remember some successes, some issues and some failures. Perhaps I misremember some of the details, though. The end result was that I did not wish to stick with multiple boots including Vista.
You are right, I did boot wih Grub in some of the scenarios. In others I added Linux to the Vista boot loader.
However, if you ever have to effect a repair to Vista, the MBR is overwritten.
