Triple boot, a diifferent approach - why didn't it work ?

R

radiospock

Member
I have a system with three hard drives, one partitioned into two parts and two empty. I already had XP and Vista
installed on the two partitions of the first drive and wanted to add Ubuntu to one of the others. To prevent
damaging the Windows installations, I unplugged the Windows drive and installed Ubuntu. It booted OK. I then
plugged the Windows drive in and both versions worked OK. Using EasyBCD I then tried to add Ubuntu to the start
menu. I have tried many combinations of drive number and partition: 2/1; 2/2; 2/3; 2/4; 1/1; 1/2; 0/1; 0/2; to
locate the Ubuntu Grub boot file to no avail. Sometimes I get an error report that the file cannot be found,
sometimes the computer locks solid with a black screen. One point: when I add Ubuntu to the boot menu it always
lists the `drive' as C:, my XP drive. Is this correct or can it be edited ? In desperation I am even thinking of putting a switch on the Windows drive so I can easily disable it when using Ubuntu ! There must be a more elegant solution - any ideas ?
 
Yes I did, but for some reason I can't find the boot loader. Maybe it's the way I installed Ubuntu. I'm very frightened of messing up Vista and XP ( both legal and activated already) using the method mentioned as I'm not sure how to make sure Ubuntu and loader go in right place. I have absolutely no experience with Linux or it's loaders. Is there any way out of the mess I seem to have got myself into ?
 
Well spock, the best thing for you would be to boot from the Ubuntu CD or a Live CD and install grub to the bootsector of your Linux partition according to "Reinstalling GRUB" on http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Linux

At any rate, there is almost no risk involved. It won't deactivate XP or Vista, and any mistakes can be fixed by doing a startup repair from the Vista DVD in under 5 minutes.

Good luck.
 
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