Triple boot Windows 7, XP, and Ubuntu?

LoneIgadzra

Actually the main thing I care about is just getting my damn XP partition working alongside 7. When I install XP, it wipes out the Windows 7 bootloader. When I restore the Windows 7 bootloader, XP stops working (can't find ntldr).

As a side note, I would really like to get Ubuntu working in all this mess too, and preferably use grub for everything (instead of choosing windows in grub and then seeing the MS bootloader so I can choose my specific windows), but that's lower priority than just getting everything working at the same time. Problem is Ubuntu 9.10 uses grub 2 which I cannot for the life of me figure out how to configure (menu.lst was nice and easy... why can't I have that back?)

Can anyone help me out?

Houndx

I can't answer your ubuntu questions, but install XP first then 7 and you shouldn't have any problems with them playing nice.

Darth Nathan

The order you need to install them in is XP, then 7, then Ubuntu. In Karmic you can downgrade to GRUB 1 if you really wish, there's an FAQ on the Ubuntu wiki. At any rate, if you want to use GRUB as the bootloader, then the easiest way to do it is just to install Ubuntu last.

Dedian

I don't know if this is different with newer versions of GRUB, but XP prefers to be on the first partition. You can remap the partitions (maybe this is different with newer GRUB versions?) but it's easier to just have it as the first partition

LoneIgadzra

Alas, it's much too late to put XP on the first partition. I just installed Windows 7 on my main partition without doing any research, and have been using it happily for a while so no way am I going to blow it away at this stage. I'd have to completely rearrange the entire HD to get XP on the first partition (though maybe I can get away with something less drastic now that I think about it).

Well I'll probably get around to it eventually.

Darth Nathan

Oh, you didn't mention that, I thought you were on a complete clean hard drive. Yeah, XP's gotta be first to do what you want without any major headaches.

tachyon

What is the XP partition going to be used for? Can the system handle a VM? Sounds like your only option at this point.

Jubal77

XP mode in Win7 would be an option if you need XP for backwards compatability with some software like tachyon said. You have to have Intel VT or AMD-V cababilities with your processor though. From the MS site:

Windows XP Mode requires an additional 1 GB of RAM, an additional 15 GB of available hard disk space, and a processor capable of hardware virtualization with Intel VT or AMD-V turned on

You could also download and use a program like VirtualBox and run XP.

LoneIgadzra

Nah I need full performance with 3D acceleration, and thus opted not to buy Win 7 pro, since Windows XP mode was the only reason I was considering it (don't need domain support or whatever the other thing is). Welp.

The whole story is I bought a 600 GB hard drive, the idea being most of it was going to be used for Windows 7 data and software, so I split the first 520 or so GB between two equal sized NTFS partitions. One to install Windows on, and the other to put programs and data that I don't want blown away in the event of having to reformat the windows partition. (This would be a lot more useful if not for the godforsaken registry. Fuck you microsoft, that was the worst idea ever and has always made my life miserable.) I've been keeping pretty true to that scheme in my usage, but reinstalling windows will still be a royal pain. To fix this, I'm going to have to resize the Windows 7 "system" partition leaving the 30 or so GB that I need for XP at the front, and expand the data partition (non-destructively I hope) to get rid of the 30 extra GB at the back. (I only want maybe 20 for Ubuntu.)

The real problem is all my damn steam games are on the "system" partition, because most of them don't have any saves I care to back up and after reinstalling windows I have to reinstall steam anyway. So I will be spending a couple hours doing "backups" to save myself days of re-downloading.

ArcticMonkey

Steam is cool with just moving the folder around. Copy the folder where you want it and it works with saves and all.

At least for me when moving from XP to Win7x64. All I needed to continue playing was type in my steam password.

Edit: Steam and WoW are the poster boys for how game installations should behave.

JDub

ArcticMonkey wrote: »

Steam is cool with just moving the folder around. Copy the folder where you want it and it works with saves and all.

At least for me when moving from XP to Win7x64. All I needed to continue playing was type in my steam password.

Edit: Steam and WoW are the poster boys for how game installations should behave.

Every time I install steam to a non default place (ie anything but C:\program files\steam) it takes a shit and never works right. I completely gave up on the backup feature after wasting 3 hours trying to backup/restore HL2 etc when I was going to reinstall. WoW likes to dump its installation files in the install folder.

No UT2004 is the gold fucking standard for game installations. Everything in a logical place, you can add/remove as you please and cut/paste the whole 10GB+ folder anywhere you want. The only problem is with a new windows installation you need to use a cd-key changer to re-enter your cd-key.

LoneIgadzra

Well I did the format. Managed to keep several games alive by exporting all their registry keys and then going back and changing all the path keys after re-importing them, steam included. Fucking torchlight's saved games were not included in the windows automated backup for some reason, alone of all my saves, so thank god I had slightly older copies elsewhere.

TelMarine

I am triple booting with these but all three are on different drives. What I eventually had to do was using an WinXP CD, restore XP's boot loader. Then, using the Win7 cd and opening a command prompt during the install, was manually copy over the boot files for Win7 onto the drive for Win7. Then go into ubuntu and edit grub's menu.lst to point to the Win7 drive. After that, it finally worked.

You can find the answers by searching google and finding them on ubuntu forums.