How to triple boot

[ilikecake]

Hi,

I am setting up a secondary computer to be used for development. I would like to have Windows XP, Windows 7 and Linux (Ubuntu) installed side-by-side. From looking around online, it seems that using Grub in Linux is a pretty good way of doing this, but apparently if you install the OSes in the wrong order, they will sometimes overwrite to bootloader for the other OSes.

Does anyone have experience doing something like this? Are there any suggestions on what to install when?

Thanks

 

[bigdogchris]

Partition the drive 3 ways. Install Linux, on one, then XP on the 2nd then finally 7 on the 3rd. It should give you a menu to choose what OS to boot to.

Another method that is also popular is having 3 different HDD's (the XP/Linux one's can be older/slower/cheap) and most boards give you a boot menu. Can just press F9 or whatever it is to select what HDD to boot to.

 

[zaxour]

And remember, once you've done all of the above, use EasyBCD to manage your w7 boot menu.

 

[RogerTheEngineer]

Always install the older version of Windows first, then the newer version. This keeps the Windows bootloaders working right. GRUB will do a fine job of booting just about anything, so I would do XP, 7, then Linux.

 

[DeaconFrost]

XP, 7, then Linux.

That would be the preferred order. GRUB handles Windows OSes okay but the Windows boot loaders don't handle Linux. I wouldn't ever mess with a third-party boot option...in the extreme rare event I'd consider multi-booting.

 

[ilikecake]

Thanks for the responses. I will let you guys know how it goes. I seem to remember trying the order XP -> Win 7 -> Linux, and grub was only able to see the Win 7 bootloader. However, I did not look into the grub configuration too much. This will all be on a single HDD, by the way...