Help BEFORE I start down this road XP/7/Jaunty

[Casper42]

So i have been reading on here for the last hour and there is alot of good information but I still have a few questions.

I am asking these questions BEFORE I get started so as to hopefully minimize the pain once I get started.

The Facts:
I currently have an old 74GB Raptor single booting to XP Pro 32.
This is about to get upgraded (via Ghost) to a 300GB VelociRaptor.
I would really like to test out Windows 7 RC1
I have also recently been playing with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) and would like to load this at home as well.

The Plan:
Ghost XP32 over to the VR and expand the drive size from 74GB to ~175GB
Partition the remaining 100Gb into 2 x 50GB partitions (both Primary)
Install Windows 7 into the first of these 2 partitions.
Install Jaunty into the second one using these: Ubuntu - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki
Install EasyBCD 2.0beta into XP/Windows 7
Add the entry for Jaunty

As I see it, this will give me a Windows 7 boot menu when I first boot up that will offer me 7, XP or Jaunty
Choosing XP will trigger NTLDR/Boot.ini and provide another boot menu, which should boot straight into XP with no delay as boot.ini will only know about XP and nothing else.
Choosing 7 will fire off winload.exe and boot up into 7
Choosing Jaunty will kick me over to the Grub Bootloader (installed into Partition 3, NOT the MBR) which will also have its timer drastically reduced.

Questions:
1) Did I get that all correct for the most part? Install Order, etc?

2) In the Jaunty guide mentioned in the Wiki that I linked above, it instructs you to put Grub into the same partition as Ubuntu. However at the bottom of the guide where it talks about EasyBCD, it does NOT say that you should check the "[ ] Grub isn't installed to the boot sector" option.
Since its installed to Partition 3 in my case, shouldnt I check this box?
Or am I thinking of the MBR as opposed to the PBR?

3) Because WinXP is on the first partition, will my installation of Windows 7 think that SYSTEMROOT is D: ? (I am fine with that, just curious is all)

Thanks in advance for any help/insight you can give me.
-Casper42

 

[Terry60]

Hi Casper, welcome to NST.
You seem to have spent your time reading wisely, and have understood everything.
Your plan of campaign should work fine.
One small clarification. The "grub is not...." box is a bit confusing and is due for a clarification overhaul in an upcoming build.
If you read the Neogrub section of the wiki, you'll see that its wording comes from the fact that you could choose to install grub with Linux or omit it altogether and use Neogrub from Windows to boot Linux.

There is a problem (with grub - not EasyBCD) when you install grub with Linux but it's on a different HDD to the Vista boot. In that case you need to tick the box which should say "grub is not installed to the Linux boot sector, or it is installed but the Linux partition isn't on this HDD".

In your case grub is installed to the Linux bootsector and it's on the same HDD, so you don't tick the box, and an entry will be added to the BCD which will directly chain the grub loader on the Linux partition.

The W7 BCD and bootmgr should be installed onto the XP partition because it's "system". By doing it that way W7 (or Vista) can automatically include XP in a dual-boot. If it were to put the BCD on its own partition and become "system" itself, it would need the XP boot files to be copied before XP would be bootable.