Triple Boot Problems

S

Scooterpig

Member
I have searched here and have have found many threads/posts very useful but I'm still having a problem with triple boot.

I have a single HDD with 3 Partitions-

Partition 1 = Mac OS X
Partition 2 = XP
Partition 3 = Vista

All 3 have installed no problems and I can boot into each if I set each partition as active. But if I set the XP partition as active I don't get any boot options, it boots only into XP. It's not until I set vista as active that I get the boot options up.

But I was in the belief that if I installed EasyBCD on the Vista partition I could multi-boot into each one. So did that and it works for both Mac OS X & Vista but not XP. If I try to boot into XP it comes up with boot missing \NTLDR file but I know it's there. If I set Vista as Active then it boots into Mac & Vista no worries.

It seems like that easyBCD is adding XP to it's list but not actually telling the XP install that there is a multi-boot there. I checked the boot.ini in XP and there are no other lines added, so don't know if I'm supposed to this manually, as I was in the belief that EasyBCD in Vista would add it all ok, but seems not.

Can anyone help me out please so I can get all 3 running fine.

Thank you.
 
Thanks terry for the reply and am trying to figure it out but getting no where at the moment, but will keep trying.

I'm guessing it's my editing of my boot.ini that the problem lies.

Can I ask please as to which Partition/OS do I select as Active or does it not matter?

Here's my boot.ini config if it helps at all -

PHP: 
G[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Vista" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Mac OS X" /fastdetect
 
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NTLDR is just for Windows NT based systems. (in your case XP)
It only gets called when you chose XP from Vista's BCD, and that's all it does. (see the second link I gave you).
You just need one of the 3 system lines (XP's obviously) and it should look like the default line.
rdisk describes which HDD it's on (you've only got one - counting starts at 0)
and the partition number starts counting from 1 (0 is the MBR)
Here's mine for comparison


;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /USEPMTIMER
 
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