HOWTO: Triple-Boot Ubuntu 6.06, Windows Vista, and Windows XP

[testube_babies]

This HowTo was inspired by molly_001's dual boot tutorial.

GOAL: To allow a PC to boot into three operating systems from one hard drive: Ubuntu, Vista, and XP.

NOTE: THIS METHOD DELETES ALL DATA ON YOUR HARD DRIVE. If you wish to try Vista without losing your data, I recommend this tutorial by Loffe_.

Requirements: -Ubuntu 6.06 Desktop CD (or DVD)
-Windows Vista Beta 2 DVD
-Windows XP Install CD
-A lot of free time
(You do not necessarily need an ethernet connection for this howto, but it is highly recommended)


PART 1: PARTITION YOUR HARD DRIVE
1. Back up all data you wish to save. You will be completely deleting everything on your hard drive in this part of the tutorial.
2. Insert the Ubuntu desktop CD into your CD drive and restart your computer . At the Ubuntu menu, choose "Start or Install Ubuntu" to boot into the live Gnome desktop.
3. Go to System -> Administration -> Gnome Partition Editor. Your current hard drive partitions will appear as colored boxes. Select each box and press the delete button. If you have a swap partition, you will have to right-click it and choose "deactivate" before you can delete it.

In the next step, you will need to create 4 partitions. The minimum amount of space each partition needs is given below. (1GB is more than adequate swap space for the average user.) You should end up filling your entire hard drive with these four partitions:
1.) NTFS (or FAT32) for Windows XP: at least 4GB
2.) NTFS for Windows Vista: at least 10GB
3.) Ext3 for Ubuntu: at least 3GB
4.) Swap for Ubuntu: ~1GB

4. Click "New" to create each partition as a primary partition in the preceding order. Make sure you choose the correct file system before clicking "Add." It's also a good idea to write down the details of your partition to help keep them straight. For example, this is what I wrote down when I partitioned my 60GB hard drive:
Partition 1: 15360MB, NTFS, Vista
Partition 2: 20480MB, NTFS, XP
Partition 3: 20368MB, EXT3, Ubuntu
Partition 4: 1024MB, Swap

5. Click "Apply" to permanently erase all data on your hard drive and repartition it for a triple-boot installation.


PART 2: INSTALL WINDOWS XP
1. Close GParted and restart your computer. When your CD drive opens automatically, replace the Ubuntu CD with your Windows XP CD and hit enter.
2. You should boot up into the Windows XP Installer. Choose "Setup Windows XP Now" to begin the installation. Refer to your notes to choose the appropriate partition on which to install Windows XP. If given the option, I recommend reformating the partition using NTFS, but you can choose any formatting procedure that you wish.
3. From here on out the XP installation is self-explanatory. I leave it to you.
4. OPTIONAL. Once you have successfully booted into Windows XP, I recommend that you get online and go to update.microsoft.com to update your Windows software. Reboot as necessary until it shows no more available updates. (Just for the record, I had to reboot nine times! )


PART 3: INSTALL WINDOWS VISTA
1. Insert the Vista DVD into your drive and restart your computer. DO NOT install Vista from within XP. Let your computer boot up from the DVD, choose your desired settings, click "Install Now," enter your serial number and accept the license.
2. When you are given the choice, click "Custom (advanced)" for the installation type. Selec the appropriate partition. NOTE: The Vista partition should be the only choice where the number in the "Total Size" column is equal to the number in the "Amount of Free Space" column. Click "Next."
3. From here on out, the Vista installation is surprisingly simple. I trust you can handle it alone. When it's finished, you will have a dual-booting system between Vista and XP.

If your OS installations have been correct so far, you'll notice that when you restart your computer, it brings up the Windows Boot Manager, which lets you choose between "Microsoft Windows" (Vista) and "Earlier version of Windows" (XP). We'll use the Windows Boot Manager to our advantage when installing Ubuntu later on.

4. OPTIONAL: ENABLE AERO INTERFACE. It's no secret that many of us want to try Vista mostly for the Aero Glass interface. Here's how to activate it. Make sure you are connected to the internet, and go to the Windows Welcome Center (the Welcome Center is the window that pops up automatically when you start Vista). Click "More Details." Click the yellow box under "Windows Activation" and hit "continue" in the resulting permissions popup. Proceed to activate your copy of Vista. When done, run Windows Update. If Windows Update did not successfully find a driver for your video card, go online to find and install Vista drivers. Then go to the Control Panel and find your Windows System Performance Rating. Click "Refresh my rating now" and proceed with the ratings diagnostic. When it is finished, you should have Aero enabled. You may need to restart your computer. **Note: Please don't litter this thread with Vista help requests. There are plenty of other forums where you can do this.


PART 4: INSTALL UBUNTU 6.06
1. Insert the Ubuntu Desktop CD into your computer and boot up into the live GNOME desktop. Double-click "Install" to begin the install process.
2. Choose your desired language, user name, etc... When you get to the "Prepare disk space" step of the installation, choose "Manually edit partition table," and click "Forward." Since we already partitioned the disk in Part 1, click "Forward" again to skip this step.
3. You should now be at the "Prepare mount points" step of the installation. Choose the EXT3 partition as the mount point "/" and the swap partition as "swap." you can reformat these two partitions if you desire.
4. Click "Forward" and then "Install" to continue with the Ubuntu installation. You can play a game in Applications -> Games while it is installing. I prefer Mines. . After a while, the installer will reboot your computer.

You'll probably notice that the GRUB menu only lists Ubuntu and Windows XP. DON'T PANIC! This is perfectly normal. If you choose Windows XP at the GRUB menu, it actually loads the Windows Boot Manager, where you can choose between Vista and XP.

5. OPTIONAL: CHANGE GRUB MENU CHOICES. As far as I know, it's not possible to bypass the Windows Boot Manager. However, you can change the menu options.

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

At the bottom of the file, you'll find something like this:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title		Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root		(hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

You can change the "title" line (but not the others) to whatever you like. Here's mine:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title		Windows Boot Manager
root		(hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

That's it! Congratulations, you are now triple-booting!

[da5id]

TTB,

The instructions you have written here are very accurate and succint. I was able to successfully triple-boot my PC

with no problems other than burning a readable Vista disc. Thank you very much. However, in an attempt to install

a "better" nvidia video card driver, I blew threw a couple of warnings and now have no video whatsoever (oddly, the

video in the boot screen is normal) -- just a perfectly good command line version of the Dapper Drake with no x-org

whatsoever. This is not good for an absolute beginner. I failed to write down the command in one of the warnings

in Terminal that began with CP that said, essentially, it would rollback the changes I made. I don't think if I

posted a support request in the Absolute Beginner forums I would get much help. (I believe that there was a MDS

checksum in the command.) BTW, the changes I attempted to make came from this website

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_dapper at 11.2. (The only problem with the nvidia drivers installed a the

standard Ubuntu Dapper Drake was the highest screen resolution I could get was 1040 x 768 instead of my LCD's

native 1280 x 1040.

That is the back story. I apologize that it is so long and less than clear and succint. My simple question is can

I fix this problem by just reinstalling Ubuntu in the EC2 partition and swap partition made pursuant to your

instructions? (I know this will write over my existing Ubuntu -- not a problem.) Can I do this with virtually no

chance of screwing up my existing Vista and Windows XP installs? Basically I'm afraid that the GRUB loader will

get confused with an existing one already installed when I reinstall Ubuntu. Thanks very much for any assistance

you can provide.

--Gene

Absolute Beginner

Text input by Microsoft Vista speech recognition.

[catlett]

Just reinstall. As long as you follow the same directions for installing ubuntu, your window partitions will not be touched.

Once you boot back into ubuntu go to this site http://www.albertomilone.eu/europeo/..._scripts1.html and download the envy script, the stable version--envy_0.4.2-1ubuntu8_all.deb

This will automate your nvidia driver installation. (it is a safe script, it is written by tseliot http://www.ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=19388 If you hity on his 'homepage' link you wil get to the site I linkied you to

[PC1492]

Is there any way to upgrade Vista after setting up the triple boot? RC1 is right around the corner, but I don't feel like waiting.

[testube_babies]

Originally Posted by PC1492 Is there any way to upgrade Vista after setting up the triple boot? RC1 is right around the corner, but I don't feel like waiting.

You can install RC1 over your beta 2 installation, but you'll probably have to reinstall GRUB. This howto should do it: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351

[da5id]

Originally Posted by catlett Just reinstall. As long as you follow the same directions for installing ubuntu, your window partitions will not be touched. Once you boot back into ubuntu go to this site http://www.albertomilone.eu/europeo/..._scripts1.html and download the envy script, the stable version--envy_0.4.2-1ubuntu8_all.deb This will automate your nvidia driver installation. (it is a safe script, it is written by tseliot http://www.ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=19388 If you hity on his 'homepage' link you wil get to the site I linkied you to

8 minutes -- done! Thank you. -g

[nijel]

I found some info about it online, but as far as I know no one has positive results.
I did it today so here I am shearing my experience with the community.
My single HDD configuration is:
C: -XP
D: -Vista RC1
Part3 -Ubuntu
Part4 -SWAP

I had this system booting in this order:

GRUB-Vista BootLoader----------->Windows XP
..........Ubuntu..............................Wind ows Vista RC1
..........Ubuntu(recovery mode)

I couldn’t get GRUB to boot Vista directly so next was to try Vista BL to boot Ubuntu.
I was following O'Reilly's Guide for booting Linux from ntldr. I installed GRUB on my Ubuntu (not on MBR) partition, saved that bootloader to grub.bin file and copied the file to C:\. Then I added this line:

C:\grub.bin=”Ubuntu Linux”

to the C:\boot.ini file. The other similar guides tells you to edit the Vista BL and add entry for Ubuntu to the menu, but I found out you don’t need to do that. Vista BL adds Ubuntu automatically from boot.ini to the menu on the next boot.
A strange thing I found out was that if I choose to boot XP, Vista BL takes me to boot.ini menu (XP and Ubuntu), but if I choose to boot Ubuntu, it takes me directly to GRUB (installed on the Ubuntu partition, not on the MBR) boot menu skipping boot.ini menu, which is very good thing. Why? Because playing with “timeout” and “default” settings in both boot.ini and menu.lst you have triple XP/Vista/Ubuntu system bootable from a single Vista BL menu. Mission accomplished.
So I have timeout=0, default=XP in the boot.ini and “timeout=1”, “default=0” and “hidemenu” activated in menu.lst
Setting up “hidemenu” and “timeout=1” gives me no menu but enough time to hit “ESC” if I need to.
The last step is to remove GRUB from the MBR so you have Vista BL only there.
I had MBR from XP/Vista installation backed up before so I just restored it and now I can boot any of the three OS’s directly from Vista BL menu.
The way all this has worked makes me believe that if you have Ubuntu booting from your boot.ini already and you install Vista, everything should work without doing anything.

[uga]

Hello, thank you for an excellent howto. Following your guide I was able to triple boot Vista, XP and Ubuntu.

What I wanted to do next is to boot all three from Grub, so what I tried was to put Vista's MBR inside Vista's own partition.

IMPORTANT: What I've done requires good knowledge of what you are doing. Don't even try if your don't understand de tools involved or you may destroy your data!

My partitions are:

/dev/sda1 - Windows XP
/dev/sda2 - Windows Vista
/dev/sda3 - Linux Swap
/dev/sda4 - Ubuntu

So far, the MBR of /dev/sda is Grub's stage 1, the MBR of /dev/sda1 is Vista's. If try to boot directly with Grub to /dev/sda2, if fails miserably, until...

# First backup Vista's MBR, just in case...
dd if=/dev/sda1 of=vistaMBR.bak bs=512 count=1

# Transfer Vista's MBR to Vista's partition...
dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sda2 bs=512 count=1

Finally I have this options in grub:

title		Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root		(hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader	+1

title		Microsoft Windows Vista
root		(hd0,1)
chainloader	+1

I don't have makeactive on Vista's option as it makes the option unbootable.

This is not finished!

So far, if you boot to "Microsoft Windows Vista", you get the Vista bootloader with the familiar "Windows Vista" and "Early version of Windows" shown. The same result as if you boot to the "Microsoft Windows XP" option.

My next steps are not tested yet, I just write what I intend to do... I will post the result here. But I post it here now to share this soon, and see what do you think about it.

• The next step will be restoration of NT Bootloader on /dev/sda1. With the NT install disk, fire the recovery console and the command "fixboot" should restore nt bootloader. I also have though of bootpart, but it doesn't restore the bootloader on NTFS.
• This leaves Ubuntu unbootable, Grub is not accesible anymore. So you will need to boot the Ubuntu LiveCD and restore the Grub's stage1 MBR.
• What I expect to have in Grub so far is a "Windows XP" option that boots directly to Windows XP, an "Ubuntu" option that boots directly to Ubuntu and a "Windows Vista" option that boots to the Vista's boot menu, so I will need to strip the "Early Version of Windows" from this menu. I will find out how can this be done.

¿What can fail? I don't know if the Vista's Bootloader lives in the Windows XP partition (/dev/sda1) or in the Windows Vista partition (/dev/sda2). The former is bad, because the restoration of NTLDR will destroy it, and make Vista inaccesible. The second is the desirable. I will find out soon...

[tokataro]

OK, so to be honest I may not have read the instructions But luckily I happened to do things in the order described, and as a complete noob, I just wanted to say how extremely impressed I was with the smooth process. Web browsing during installation? No complaints about my ornery Realtek sound device? Friendly, GUI-based partition editor? Rock ON.

[BongoBob]

First off, excellent guide. Tri-Booting sounds hard, but in reality it's quite simple.

That being said, if I wanted to quad boot for some reason, where would I install the fourth OS. A friend of mine thinks this is impossible, but I know it can be done, so I was going to try it this weekend with Vista, XP, Ubuntu, and either FreeBSD, SUSE, or Fedora. I'd assume I'd install it before Ubuntu but after Vista and XP.

Any help would be appreciated

Also, I appologize if this is the wrong place to post this, but this is the most relevant thread I could find