XP/Windows 7/Debian Multiboot Help

L

lewax00

Member
I'm trying to set up a laptop with 3 OSes, XP and Windows 7 on the internal drive, and Debian on an external drive. All of them work fine, the only problem is the order, GRUB boots first, which is a pain because it means every time I boot I have to plug in the external drive to get to either Windows on the internal. I'd like to be able to start without the external unless I'm booting Debian. Any help is greatly appreciated :grinning:
 
Hi lewax00, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies,

It sounds as if your boot priority is incorrectly configured in your BIOS to boot from any attached USB drive before your internal. If you go into your BIOS and put your internal drive before USB device in the boot sequence, you should be fine, but remember that you'll need to tell the computer to boot from external drive if you want to.
 
Boot into Vista and disconnect your external. Open EasyBCD, click manage bootloader, and re-install the Vista bootloader to the mbr.
 
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Ok that fixed the first problem, now is there a way to boot into the external without going through the BIOS? As of now it just hangs with a blinking underscore when I try.
 
With the drive powered on, add an entry with EasyBCD pointing to it. Use grub's edit feature during boot time to change "root (hd0,y)" to "root (hd1,y). Once you're in Ubuntu, open /boot/grub/menu.lst in gedit with sudo and modify it/save so its permanent. With this configuration, you won't be able to boot the external on its own without first booting from the internal (unless you change the values back), but I don't believe with the way you want it setup this should be a problem.

I've had it setup in this fashin before myself. The entry in Window's bootloader should work if your BIOS is consistent with the order it considers devices from boot to boot and you have your external powered on before the computer is powered on when you want to use Ubuntu.
 
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