Tripple booting with Vista, XP, Ubuntu on three separate drives

[Coolname007]

ok after doing this as a root user I was able to try to move all the files to filesystem however since filesystem does not have enough space it will not move

hmm...:wtf: So how many GBS did you allocate to the Ubuntu partition anyway, when you created it? :booyah: I would have suggested making it at least 20 GBs in size for a real install of Ubuntu.

-Coolname007

 

[isg0nnarain]

should I do a quick format and reinstall and type all the steps that I will be doing?

For the last three times (soon to be possibly 4th), this is what i did:

In windows Vista Ultimate I used windows partitioner to shrink my unused third drive from 300GB into two 150GB

then I inserted the Ubuntu 8.04 LiveCD rebooted got to the menu for installation

clicked on install-picked a language and keyboard as well as time zone-got to the partitioner-picked on guided and choose the third drive (SCSl4 (0,0,0) (sdc) - 320.1GB ATA ST9320421AS)-clicked on forward-named pc and gave a pw-clicked on Windows Vista/Longhorn (loader) (sda1) box to migrate documents and settings-forward-clicked on advanced-got to the boot loader option and this is what I get besides (hd0):
/dev/sda ATA ST9320421AS (298.1 GB)
/dev/sda1 Windows Vista/Longhorn (loader)
/dev/sda-1
/dev/sdb ATA Hitachi HTS54323 (298.1 GB)
/dev/sdb1
/dev/sdc ATA ST9320421AS (298.1 GB)
/dev/sdc1

I picked on /dev/sdc ATA ST9320421AS

and you know the rest

 

[Coolname007]

should I do a quick format and reinstall and type all the steps that I will be doing?

For the last three times (soon to be possibly 4th), this is what i did:

In windows Vista Ultimate I used windows partitioner to shrink my unused third drive from 300GB into two 150GB

So if the partition was 150 GBs, then how did run out of space, and where did the 310.8 GB Media drive come from? Could you please give the sizes of your Vista and XP drives and partitions, so we can figure out first of all which drive that one is? It sounds like you must have installed Grub to the wrong drive, i.e. to either your Vista or XP one... Any other Ubuntu installations that I should know about? :lol:

-Coolname007

EDIT: And I think maybe you should have clicked on /dev/sdc1 when installing Ubuntu...it looks like you must have installed Grub to the MBR of that hard drive, instead of to the partition's bootsector, which is what you should have done.

 

[isg0nnarain]

Yea I would like to know how 310.8GB did come up.

All my drives are approx 298 GB

Total
Local C: 298 GB (windows xp)
Local E: 298 GB (windows vista)
Local F: 298 GB (reserved for Ubuntu)

Used
Local C: 9GB
Local E: 55GB
Local F: 1GB

and like i said I took F and shrunk it in half


Addendum:


Ok I decided to format the F drive again and just try out ubuntu to see what drives come up on there this is what i get

CD-RW/Blu-ray Drive
New Volume (when clicked on, contains no folders or files since Ubuntu is not installed)
Windows Vista Ultimate (contains window folders and files)
Windows XP (contains window folders and files)
Filesystem:
bin, boot, cdrom, dev, etc, home, initrd, lib, media, mnt, opt, proc, rofs, root, sbin, srv, sys, tmp, usr, var, initrd.img, vmlinuz

boot has these files:
abi-2.6.24-16-generic
config-2.6.24-16-generic
initrd.img-2.6.24-161-generic.bak
memtest86+.bin
System.map-2.6.24-16generic
vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic

 

[Coolname007]

Yea I would like to know how 310.8GB did come up.

All my drives are approx 298 GB

Total Used
Local C: 298 GB 9GB (Windows XP) Same hard drive as F
Local E: 298 GB 55GB (Vista)
Local F: 298 GB 1GB (reserved for Ubuntu) Same hard drive as C

and like i said I took F and shrunk it in half

I thought you said you had 3 hard drives? :wtf: From this description, it seems you only have two, one of which (F) contains both XP and Ubuntu. And now I can easily see why you didn't have enough space for the boot files, if you only allocated 1 GB for Ubuntu! :lol: As for that 310.8 GB hard drive...that must be the third drive, which you mentioned, and is probably all free, since you installed your three OSes to to the other two...or possibly one, depending on which hard drive you installed Vista on.

Ok I decided to format the F drive again and just try out ubuntu to see what drives come up on there this is what i get

Don't reformat just yet oint: I have to go now, since I have some things to attend to in the real world, but I want your setup to be the same way it was that I left it! I need to figure out the rest of your situation, which I can't do until I get back...

-Coolname007

 

[isg0nnarain]

k thx for the help. sorry I should have been more specific, Drive F and C are the exact same hard drive model. My laptop originally came set up with RAID 0 which is why drive F and C are of the exact same model

Addendum:

ahhh sorry I made a huge mistake in my description. All of my drives are originally 320GB I am not sure why I did not notice that sooner I guess seeing the information from my computer just tricked me into thinking I had 300GB. So far I have not formated and I'm about to run fdisk -l command. I'll post the results soon.

Addendum:

After running sudo fdisk -l command:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x14c0d5fe

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 38912 312560608+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xeb67eb9b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 38914 312568832 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0006161f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 37780 303467818+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 37781 38913 9100822+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdc5 37781 38913 9100791 82 Linux swap / Solaris
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

 

[Coolname007]

Disk /dev/sdc: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0006161f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 37780 303467818+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 37781 38913 9100822+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdc5 37781 38913 9100791 82 Linux swap / Solaris
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

Ok, so any idea what's on that Extended /dev/sdc2 partition? Is one of the logical drives in it where you installed Linux to the first time?

-Coolname007

 

[isg0nnarain]

No, I have no clue

 

[Coolname007]

No, I have no clue

Ok. Well...it would certainly help a lot to know what's in that extended partition. I'm thinking the "Fileystem" volume must be a logical drive in that Extended partition. As for that error you got earlier (the one that mentioned Bootpart), I think it must have been due to the wrong "drive" (partition) selected in EasyBCD, under the Linux tab, and the "Drive" menu when you created the Ubuntu entry. I think you must have got confused with the similar sizes, and the different numbering system that EasyBCD uses for partitions, and so you selected the wrong drive...possibly the logical drive called "Filesystem" which does not have Grub installed. I'm thinking the Media drive is the right one after all, and the "310.8GB" label must be just that...a "label" or name and not the actual size as I originally thought. I'm guessing that it automatically named it that, either when you created the partition, or when you installed Ubuntu on that partition.

So could you please post a screenshot of the "Drive" menu in EasyBCD, under the Linux tab? And a screenshot of the Disk Management (located at Start>Right click on "Computer">Manage>Disk Management) window would also help a lot. To take a screenshot, push the "Prnt Scrn" button, which should be at the upper right of your keyboard. Next simply paste it in the Paint application, and save the file as a jpeg, and upload the screenshot in your next post.

-Coolname007

k thx for the help. sorry I should have been more specific, Drive F and C are the exact same hard drive model. My laptop originally came set up with RAID 0 which is why drive F and C are of the exact same model

Addendum:

ahhh sorry I made a huge mistake in my description. All of my drives are originally 320GB I am not sure why I did not notice that sooner I guess seeing the information from my computer just tricked me into thinking I had 300GB. So far I have not formated and I'm about to run fdisk -l command. I'll post the results soon.

Addendum:

After running sudo fdisk -l command:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x14c0d5fe

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 38912 312560608+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xeb67eb9b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 38914 312568832 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0006161f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 37780 303467818+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 37781 38913 9100822+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdc5 37781 38913 9100791 82 Linux swap / Solaris
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

should I do a quick format and reinstall and type all the steps that I will be doing?

For the last three times (soon to be possibly 4th), this is what i did:

In windows Vista Ultimate I used windows partitioner to shrink my unused third drive from 300GB into two 150GB

then I inserted the Ubuntu 8.04 LiveCD rebooted got to the menu for installation

clicked on install-picked a language and keyboard as well as time zone-got to the partitioner-picked on guided and choose the third drive (SCSl4 (0,0,0) (sdc) - 320.1GB ATA ST9320421AS)-clicked on forward-named pc and gave a pw-clicked on Windows Vista/Longhorn (loader) (sda1) box to migrate documents and settings-forward-clicked on advanced-got to the boot loader option and this is what I get besides (hd0):
/dev/sda ATA ST9320421AS (298.1 GB)
/dev/sda1 Windows Vista/Longhorn (loader)
/dev/sda-1
/dev/sdb ATA Hitachi HTS54323 (298.1 GB)
/dev/sdb1
/dev/sdc ATA ST9320421AS (298.1 GB)
/dev/sdc1

I picked on /dev/sdc ATA ST9320421AS

and you know the rest

Yea I would like to know how 310.8GB did come up.

All my drives are approx 298 GB

Total
Local C: 298 GB (windows xp)
Local E: 298 GB (windows vista)
Local F: 298 GB (reserved for Ubuntu)

Used
Local C: 9GB
Local E: 55GB
Local F: 1GB

and like i said I took F and shrunk it in half


Addendum:


Ok I decided to format the F drive again and just try out ubuntu to see what drives come up on there this is what i get

CD-RW/Blu-ray Drive
New Volume (when clicked on, contains no folders or files since Ubuntu is not installed)
Windows Vista Ultimate (contains window folders and files)
Windows XP (contains window folders and files)
Filesystem:
bin, boot, cdrom, dev, etc, home, initrd, lib, media, mnt, opt, proc, rofs, root, sbin, srv, sys, tmp, usr, var, initrd.img, vmlinuz

boot has these files:
abi-2.6.24-16-generic
config-2.6.24-16-generic
initrd.img-2.6.24-161-generic.bak
memtest86+.bin
System.map-2.6.24-16generic
vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic

 

[isg0nnarain]

ok, I took the screen shots.

 

[Coolname007]

The Disk Management screenshot is correct, but the EasyBCD screenshot needs to be taken while under the Linux tab, after clicking the Add/Remove Entries button on the left-hand panel. I was wanting to see what the "Drive" menu under the Linux tab contains, so I can figure out which "drive" is the correct one you need to select. But I also would have needed the screenshot of the View Settings window, as well, so just leave the ones you have currently uploaded in your last post, and upload the new one that you need to take of the "Drive" menu under the Linux tab, after clicking the "Add/Remove Entries" button in your next post, and then that should take care of it.

-Coolname007

 

[isg0nnarain]

k hope this is the right scr sht

 

[Coolname007]

k hope this is the right scr sht

Ok...so you need to select Drive 2, Partition 0 when you create the entry for Ubuntu. And also select the "Grub" option in the "Type" menu. Delete any and all Ubuntu entries you have currently, and then create a new entry after doing the two things I just described, and try it again, and it should work.

-Coolname007

 

[isg0nnarain]

Ok...so you need to select Drive 2, Partition 0 when you create the entry for Ubuntu. And also select the "Grub" option in the "Type" menu. Delete any and all Ubuntu entries you have currently, and then create a new entry after doing the two things I just described, and try it again, and it should work.

-Coolname007

k i did what you said and when I choose neolinux this is what i get:

BootPart 2.60 Bootsector (c) 1993-2005 Gilles Vollant BootPart
Loading new partition
Bootsector from C.H. Hochstatter

if i remember correctly, you told me that this comes up due to a missing or misplaced grub?

 

[Coolname007]

k i did what you said and when I choose neolinux this is what i get:

BootPart 2.60 Bootsector (c) 1993-2005 Gilles Vollant BootPart
Loading new partition
Bootsector from C.H. Hochstatter

if i remember correctly, you told me that this comes up due to a missing or misplaced grub?

Yes...that error is normally due to either Grub not being installed correctly to Ubuntu's partition, or the wrong "drive" selected for the entry in EasyBCD. But anyway...time to try NeoGrub instead! :brows:

Ok...so this time, create a new entry, using the exact same procedure I described before, only this time do select the "Grub isn't installed to the bootsector" option. This will install NeoGrub, which hopefully will be able to boot Ubuntu, instead of the other method which uses Bootpart.

-Coolname007

EDIT: And are you sure that's the entire "error" message? Because what you posted so far is exactly what it says when it boots fine...
Sure you got the external drive you installed Ubuntu to turned on, and connected properly to your computer?

 

[isg0nnarain]

man it looks like whatever I do will not work. Anyhow I decided to format the drive since I don't think linux really needs 320GB.

So I just reinstalled Ubuntu again but use the the ubuntu partitioner to split the drive into two. I chose sdc1 on the advanced options

during the installation I noticed this:

creating ext3 filesystem for / in partition #5 SCIS4

after the installation completed I still tried your methods and still nothing

although the neogrub provided slightly more info but same results

 

[Coolname007]

man it looks like whatever I do will not work. Anyhow I decided to format the drive since I don't think linux really needs 320GB.

So I just reinstalled Ubuntu again but use the the ubuntu partitioner to split the drive into two. I chose sdc1 on the advanced options

during the installation I noticed this:

creating ext3 filesystem for / in partition #5 SCIS4

after the installation completed I still tried your methods and still nothing

although the neogrub provided slightly more info but same results

Ok...so the only possibility of why its not working that comes to mind right now is perhaps your BIOS does not support booting from external drives.?...

I am literally out of clues right now, on why everything's not working the way it should...and I'm beat as well. I need to get to bed, as its pretty late over here...and maybe by tomorrow more options would have presented themselves. Or perhaps by tomorrow, I will be able to think with with a clearer mind, and try to come up with some other reason why its not working. Don't give up hope just yet... As for me, I never was able to get it booting either with the method in EasyBCD that uses Bootpart...I had to manually download a separate version of Bootpart, extract to C:/, and then run the following commands in Vista:

C:/bootpart.exe
C:/bootpart 4 c:/ubuntu.lnx Ubuntu Linux

In your case, you might have to exchange the "4" for some other number...but I'm too tired right now to think of what that number might be! :lol: To give you some clue...it is simply the partition number, as shows up in the MBR. For instance, "4" would equal partition 4, or the last primary in the MBR.

Hope this helps, and I will check back tomorrow to see if you made any further progress since.

-Coolname007

 

[isg0nnarain]

hey no problem your the one who is taking time to help me so I am very grateful as it is.

yea, it's pretty late here as well by I tend to be nocturnal so I will be fooling around with windows 7 (64bit) and see how that does. I can see why you might think my BIOS may not support booting from an external drive, I doubt Sager/Clevo would allow for such a fault. I know most macs do not allow booting from an external drive, atleast the imacs don't (believe me I tried), but this laptop has been very flexible and this is the only time I ever had a real issue with it. I'm going to try to find some one who knows about linux since I am just a noob and maybe they can see what I have been doing wrong.

Good night and thx for all your hard work.

 

[Terry60]

I looked back at your first post to see if you have a mix of SATA and IDE HDDs, but you don't specify.
There is a problem with this mix, in that the Vista OS numbers the disks differently from the BIOS and the bootloaders.
It was first noticed during HnS development, where it caused the early builds to fail, but has very recently been realized to affect EasyBCD too, and has been included as a warning in the sticky and the wiki.
In EasyBCD, when you select the drive drop-down in the Linux tab of Add/Remove entries, is your "system" partition (the one you're booting from, on the first in HDD in your BIOS sequence) shown as disk 0 ?
If it's not, this is probably where you are having problems.
EasyBCD gives incorrect drive numbers in this particular case (or more correctly, it propogates the incorrect numbers which Vista has generated)
If you do have this particular problem see the workaround provided by the person who reported it.

 

[isg0nnarain]

All three drives of mine are SATA

Drive One is Serial-ATA II 7400RPM
Drive Two is Serial-ATA II 3400RPM
Drive Three is Serial-ATA II 7400RPM

The way I dual booted xp and vista

was I first installed xp and then vista so

The way ubuntu orders is:
hd0 is xp
hd1 is vista
hd2 is nothing at the moment