Recommend a boot manager?

IceBurner

I'm looking for for a boot manager to boot multiple operating systems (XP, Win7, Ubuntu). Does anyone have recommendations or feedback for a specific program?

A Google search turns up several boot managers (such as GAG and Plop) which purport to do what I want: auto-hide inactive OS partitions on each boot, thereby avoiding how many OS's don't play nice together.

What doesn't turn up is much in the way of reviews or discussion on boot managers. The thought of having to fix a trashed boot sequence makes me ill, so I thought it would be best to ask around first.

nessin

IceBurner wrote: »

I'm looking for for a boot manager to boot multiple operating systems (XP, Win7, Ubuntu). Does anyone have recommendations or feedback for a specific program?

A Google search turns up several boot managers (such as GAG and Plop) which purport to do what I want: auto-hide inactive OS partitions on each boot, thereby avoiding how many OS's don't play nice together.

What doesn't turn up is much in the way of reviews or discussion on boot managers. The thought of having to fix a trashed boot sequence makes me ill, so I thought it would be best to ask around first.

Since you're using Ubuntu just stick with GRUB. That is the reason why you don't see so much discussion on boot managers, because the default Linux ones do the job just fine these days, even when you start getting really creative/advanced.

Other than that I've used the Ultimate Boot CD a few times with no problems (as an actual boot manager).

GnomeTank

I was going to say GRUB as well, but I've been beated.

General_Win

I don't know if you're having problems installing either, but I believe the order you should install those OSes in should be: Win7/Vista, XP, Linux. After you install XP, you probably won't be able to boot into 7 until you install Linux.

Tofystedeth

I think typically with Windows OSes as long as you install them in order from older to newer, it'll be fine. Of course since he's probably going to go with GRUB instead of the Windows boot loader it doesn't really matter.

IceBurner

Hmm, for some stupid reason my Ubuntu Live disc keeps erroring out of install at an early stage, as though it seems to have issues with my hardware

Is there any way I can embed GRUB by itself?

Circumstances dictate a less than optimal situation, overall. I've had an XP install for a while and plan to migrate from it to Win7 over time. XP was installed first and I don't plan to reinstall it just for this. I had planned ahead though and left plenty of room after the 80 gig XP partition for more OS's.

MarvellousM

I'm not entirely sure if this would help but when I've had some boot issues using Windows and Ubuntu EasyBCD helped me a lot.