Agreed [if you want a messy mixture of the Vista and Grub boot loaders].
I needed a clean, easily *modifiable* system; I would have preferred to
use the free Grub approach but could not integrate all the operating
systems I required. Acronis OS Selector achieved that.
I said that Vista was forthright, not particular.
forth·right [adj.]
1. Direct and without evasion; straightforward.
2. Proceeding straight ahead.
i.e. Vista and XP, to a lesser extent, do not allow the efficient
management of partitions as one is able to do in Grub and Acronis.
Moral of the story: Whatever floats your boat.
On the 04/10/2008 14:24, Ken Schaefer wrote the following:
Huh?
Install XP
Install Vista - it will recognise the prior operating system and add it to the
MS bootloader. Not sure what you mean by Vista being particular about
installation demands - it's not different to any other OS
Install Ubuntu.
Cheers
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter van Houten [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, 4 October 2008 8:02 AM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Re: Triple boot
David, I needed a laptop with multiple operating systems for portable
support work and I experimented for about a week until I managed to get
the configuration below to work. I initially tried every free route and
almost gave up on the project even after resigning myself to using
Acronis OS Selector. Even that needed a lot of fiddling.
I must warn you, it is not for the faint hearted and I can't guarantee
it will work for you. Vista, in particular is quite forthright in its
installation demands!
The procedure listed below your message...
*From:* David Mazzaccaro [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*Sent:* Friday, October 03, 2008 4:55 PM
*To:* NT System Admin Issues
*Subject:* Triple boot
I would like to be able to triple boot my machine:
Windows XP Professional
Windows Vista Ultimate
Ubuntu (latest version)
What is the best way to do this? My hard drive is 80GB
I assume Gparted is the best utility to create the the partions - and
start from there?
Any direction to get me started is appreciated.
Thx
Making a multiple boot system using Acronis OS Selector
------------------------------------------------------
Using the following operating system and data partitions:
. Windows Vista SP1
. Windows XP SP3
. Kubuntu Linux 8.04
. FreeBSD 7.0
. Linux/Unix swap
. NTFS data
PC operating systems use a hard disk drive divided up into a number of
partitions. Only 4 PRIMARY partitions are allowed. It is possible to
use EXTENDED partitions which can contain numerous LOGICAL partitions to
create more than 4 partitions.
The physical disk is divided up into cylinders, heads and sectors
(c/h/s) and each head covers a track of 63 sectors (sector 1 to 63).
The first sector of the disk 0/0/1 contains the MBR (Master Boot Record)
and the partition table with the layout of the disk. The remainder of
this track (up to and including the last sector 63 is normally not used
but for our purposes, it is used by Acronis to store the OS Selector
boot loader code. The first partition created will start at 0/1/1
1. Boot from the Linux or FreeBSD CD and create a small primary
partition, say 100MB, as /dev/sda1 and format as FAT32. This will be
used to store the Acronis OS Selector programs and data. Using FAT32
format allows us to access the partition from DOS, if needed, in case of
catastrophe. Acronis allows one to use a Windows partition to store
this data but knowing Windows, I would prefer to keep it completely
separate. It also allows us to add and delete partitions at a later
stage without disturbing the code.
2. Boot from the Vista DVD and create the next partition for Vista. Use
whatever disk space is needed but bear in mind that Vista (as well as
XP, Linux and FreeBSD) will use the last NTFS partition to store data,
so the program partition does not need to be too large, so I chose 20GB.
Vista tends to rewrite the MBR and boot sectors, which is why we
install it first.
3. Boot from the Linux CD and run GpartEd. Check that the first two
partitions are /dev/sda1 (100MB) and /dev/sda2 (20GB). Create the next
partition (/dev/sda3) for Windows XP as NTFS and bear in mind the sizing
constraints as per the Vista install. (We cannot directly install XP as
the install process would overwrite our MBR and system boot sectors, so
we will use a partition copy later on).
4. Create the fourth primary partition (/dev/sda4) as an extended
partition. (This will contain the remainder of the logical partitions
we require). Use all the remaining space on the disk. Within this
extended partition, create an EXT3 partition (/dev/sda5) for Linux and a
partition (/dev/sda6) for FreeBSD Unix. Make sure the mount points are
set as "/". Use whatever size is required (I used 10GB each) Create
ONE swap partition (/dev/sda7) for Linux and Unix and the rule of thumb
is 2 x RAM, so I used 2,048MB. Lastly, create a data partition
(/dev/sda8) for all the operating systems using the remainder of the
space. All the operating systems can read and write NTFS, so use this
format to prepare the last partition.
5. Install Linux to the first EXT partition but make sure that under
advanced settings in the partitioning section, you select the boot
record to go into the Linux partition and NOT to the MBR!
6. Boot the system (it will automatically go into Vista as there isn't
anything in the MBR to tell it otherwise). Install Acronis Disk
Director and make sure it goes into the very first FAT32 partition.
Choose to load the OS Selector option.
7. Reboot the system and OS Selector should start automatically,
displaying Vista, Linux and floppy boot options. Boot from each to
check functionality.
8. Use Acronis Trueimage to copy an existing Windows XP installation.
Trueimage is unable to directly copy one partition to overwite another,
so I used a USB hard drive containing an XP installation and dumped the
image file on the data partition. I then ran the program again to
restore that image to the XP partition we created in (3).
9. After restarting the system, it might be possible to boot into XP but
if it doesn't work, boot from an XP CD and choose "R" to repair at the
"Welcome to Setup" screen. Choose the XP installation and after entering
the administrator password, enter FIXBOOT (*NOT* fixmbr!) at the command
prompt to repair the XP filesystem boot record.
10. Restart the system and boot from the first FreeBSD CD. Install
FreeBSD to (/dev/sda6)
Voilà! (hopefully)
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