Triple Boot Problem with Vista , XP & Ubuntu

Kwooldude

Member
Dear Guru,

I am a new user of easy bcd 1.71 and i am in need of your assistance. I have a new Dell Vostro 1000 with 120 GB hard drive. I decided to go for an ambitious triple boot with Xp, Vista & Ubuntu. I have partioned the drive as follows

hda (0,0) - 25 GB - NFTS - XP
hda (0,1)- 58 GB - NFTS - Data transfer between xp & Vista
hda (0,2)- 15 GB - NFTS- Vista
hda (0,3)- 5 GB - FAT32 - Data transfer between linux & windows
hda (0,4)- 1 GB - Swap - Ubuntu
hda (0,5) - 9 GB- Ext3 - Ubuntu

I installed the operating systems in the following order , first XP, followed by Ubuntu and finally Vista. Before i installed vista, i was able to dual boot both XP & Ubuntu using Grub. After i installed vista , the vista MBR gave me options only for XP & Vista. I therefore decided to try Easy BCD to get triple boot menu.

Since i did not specify as to where to install the Grub during Ubuntu installation i had to use the live cd to find where the grub is installed using the following cmd "find /grub/stage1" and it told me that it is in hd (0,2).

I then went into vista , used Easy BCD to add a new entry for Linux. I assumed that hd(0,2) partition refers to the 15 GB vista parition. After i created the entry, the settings indicated that the drive letter is "D" which was the same drive letter seen in the entry for XP, whereas vista 's entry was "C". I restarted the system and saw three entries for multi boot, vista, XP and Linux. XP and Vista booted fine but when i tried Linux it came to a black screen with some words like new boot partition & couple of sentences . The black screen was flashing just for an instant , unfortunately i could not read much as it went back to multiboot screen within a second. Now i cannot boot Ubuntu, i went to EasyBCD & tried changing the drive letters for Ubuntu entry from D to C & E with no success. They both gave me NTLDR not found error.

I also tried selecting the option of grub not installed for the Linux entry and it led to catastrophy . I was able to boot Ubuntu & recover Vista from the DVD recovery discs but to my dismay XP would not load issuing hda.dll file is corrupt or missing error.Therefore i had to reinstall the whole thing back over again from the begining and now i am in same place where i can boot XP & Vista but not Ubuntu.

I also tried to rewrite the grub via live cd in to the partitions hd(0,4) or hd (0,5) but they both gave me an error 17 saying that they are not mountable .I have not yet tried to rewrite the grub in to hd (0,0) or hd (0,1) as i am afraid that it will mess up my XP installI feel that somehow EasyBCD is not able to boot the grub and i dont know how to fix it without performing a ubuntu reinstalation. I am a noob and i apologize if the post is too decriptive, thanks in advance.

Sincerely
kwooldude
 
Hi Kwooldude, welcome to NST.

That command (find /grub/...) tells you where the GRUB files are located, but not what bootsector GRUB is installed to.

In the live CD install GRUB to (hd0,2), then add a new entry in EasyBCD pointing to that partition.
 
Hi Guru,

I forgot to mention that i did install the grun to hd(0,2) by typing the following cmds in the live cd interface.

sudo grub
find /boot/grub/stage1
root hd(0,2)
setup hd(0,2)

even then i still cant get it to work, i am sorry if i was not clear in my last post query.

Thanks
Guru
 
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