Tri-boot installation Mint -> Win7 -> XP
 

Hi everyone,

So here's the situation. I have my workstation dual-booting Mint 7 and Windows 7. I had no problems installing either OS. But now I need to run some software that just won't run on Win7, not even in compatibility mode. So I have to use XP.

So I installed XP Pro on a 1TB drive connected by eSATA. Again, no problems with the install, smooth and easy. BUT, and I'm sure you know where I'm going with this, XP jacked up the booting. I lost the grub menu, of course, and I had a hell of a time getting my system back to where I started. I removed the eSATA disk (with XP on it) but could not use the standard grub fix (find /boot/grub/stage1, root(hd0), etc, etc.). I used the Win7 repair utility and that restored my ability to boot into Win7. I then was able to use the grub fix and was back to square one. I tried adding XP to the menu.lst (using the correct hd address and all) but when I selected XP from the grub menu it said BOOTMGR was missing. I'm assuming Win7 wiped it out when I ran the win7 repair utility.

So, does anyone have any idea how I can "easily" boot XP from the eSATA disk?

I've searched the forums here and I think my scenario is a bit different than other tri-boot configurations. I can't install the drive in the workstation because there are no more slots left for an HD to fit. So it has to be eSATA.

Any suggestions?

You need to boot xp from win 7. I believe it is possible to boot vista or win 7 from xp but it is somewhat convoluted. I think the easiest method would be to download EasyBCD from neosmart technologies and use it to manage your win 7 bootloader to boot xp. It's been around for a while and has some good documentation.

Thanks for the reply yancek. Worked like a charm, though now in the grub menu when I choose Win7 it gives me the windows boot loader which I then can choose either XP or Win7. So it's a bit clunky like that. I guess I could bypass the grub menu, but it's so much nicer looking ;)

True, but if it works?? Another option you might try is chainloading xp and win7 but I'm not sure if that would work. win 7 probably would boot its boot files in the xp partition. Some years ago when I had W98 on the first partition and installed W2000 on another the W2K files were in the W98 partition.

I wound up changing the grub menu.lst to indicate choosing the Windows selection takes you to the Win7/XP bootloader. So it's one extra little keyboard selection, big deal.

Thanks again for your help.