Triple Boot Win XP, Linux (Suse 10.1) and Vista Beta 2

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G

Guest

Hello

Before I go ahead and attempt an install, has anyone installed Vista with a
similar setup ?

WinXP, Linux and Vista.

And will Vista pick up my Suse partitions (they are a mix of reiser and
ext3) ?

Thanks

Roger
 
Roger/Andre,

I am in a similar situation, currently running a dual-boot system with XP
and Suse 10.1. I'd like to install Vista on the same hard drive with XP and
Suse. From other postings I've seen, a Vista install replaces the Grub boot
loader with the Vista boot loader. This wipes out the ability to boot Suse
since Suse doesn't appear on the Vista boot loader menu. I'd thought about
getting a second hard drive and installing Vista on it, but I'm not sure if
the Vista install would still wipe out the Grub boot loader on the first hard
drive. Does anyone know if it's possible to add a Suse entry to the Vista
boot loader?
 
Use this for the xp boot.ini for starting xp or Vista

xp boot.ini

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Vista"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect

ALSO, put your Linux grub on a floppy and when you want to boot the Linux
OS, start by putting in the floppy and then starting your PC

To make the floppy here is how : When you Linux install asks "do you want
to install grub to boot drive, say no. Instead say to a floppy (fd0). Then
set your bios boot order to floppy, CD, HD. When grub installs to the MBR
it only installs a pointer to your boot partion. With grub on the floppy,
just have no floppy in the drive when you want to start xp or Vista.
 
Thanks for the feedback. A couple of questions: I'm currently running XP and
Suse 10.1 from a single hard drive (dual booting with Grub). If I buy a
second hard drive and install Vista on it, won't the Vista install render the
boot.ini file useless since Vista's boot loader doesn't use boot.ini any
longer? Re the Grub on a floppy suggestion: Would I need to reinstall Suse
10.1 to get to the point where the "do you want to install grub to the boot
drive" query is issued? This also raises the question: do I need a second
hard drive? I have a 250 GB SATA drive that originally had just XP on it.
When I installed Suse, it had a partition manager that shrunk the XP
partition and set up the Suse partitions. Could I just shrink the XP
partition some more and stick Vista in between then use your floppy approach
to boot Suse?
 
That's exactly what I did.

(250 GB HD, now with XP, Vista, and FC Linux)

I originally had XP, then I shrunk it's partition and installed Fedora Core

Then I got even more bored and decided to try out Vista..

So I shrunk the XP partition again, and installed Vista on the newly formed
free space.

It (obviously..which is terrible) installed the new Windows bootloader over
grub. (Without an option for FC of course.)

All I had to do after that was reinstall grub (linux cd 1), point it to the
Linux partition, and the XP partition (NOT Vista), restart, and voila! (sp?)
Grub can now boot to Linux, OR the Windows Bootloader (From which I can
choose XP or Vista)
 
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