Stuck on triple boot

JayQuery

Member
Hi all, after spending hours installing/uninstalling OSes and EasyBCD, reading posts/articles over the internet, I think it's time to get some help from here because I'm really having a big headache right now.

OK, I have 3 operating systems (XP32, XP64, Win7) installed independently on one HDD. By independently, I mean when installing one system, the other two partitions were hidden. So the boot.ini files on XP32 and XP64 or the Win7 boot loader are untouched. The table looks like the following:

Code:
hd0, 0    XP32    Primary    Hidden
hd0, 1    XP64    Primary    Hidden
hd0, 2    Win7    Primary    Active

I tried to install EasyBCD on Win7, and the menu shows all 3 OSes when booting. But when I booted to XP32/ XP64 and then reboot, XP32/ XP64 would be automatically loaded. The menu is gone. By just modifying boot.ini, partitions won't get hid.

What I want is a just the menu with all 3 OSes at boot everytime I start my computer. So could someone please point me to the right direction. Thanks.
 
Hi Jay, welcome to NST.
Please have aread of the sticky thread and follow the links for information on how dual-booting works, what needs to be copied to where etc.
How are you hiding your partitions ?
Are you booting with grub or through Windows ? (I see you use Linux notation)
 
Since I couln't get EasyBCD to work, I used Partition Magic boot CD to hide/unhide partitions and PQBoot (manually) to switch among OSes.

And I'v tried to install grub manually but got no luck, I'm not a *NIX user. The notation was from EasyBCD menu.lst just to indicate my partitions.

I think the sticky thread talks about dual-boot only which is much different with triple/quad Windows booting. Anyway, I'll take a closer look at it.

Is it gonna be a lot of work to triple boot in my case?
 
No. Triple booting windows with 2 XPs is as easy as with one. The boot.ini and the other 2 XP boot files are copied to the "system" partition (probably W7 in your case), and the boot.ini will contain 2 entries for the XP systems. If you use EasyBCD 2.0, it will automate the creation of the 2 way boot.ini for you.
The problem of XP (both of them) destroying W7's restore points will have to be considered, so you'll either need to use the MS registry patch (if it works for you) to hide W7 from XP, or a 3rd party boot manager like HnS from this site which will do the job for you at the same time as automating your multi-boot process.
It also has the advantage that it will give you a single boot menu with all three of your systems.
The W7 BCD will only allow you to boot a choice of XPs through a second menu (NTLDR's which reads the boot.ini)
 
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