I am running Linux Mint 6 Felicia along with Windows XP, finally pcLos 2009 is out so I installed it choosing the option use existing free space, unfortunately grub is only giving me two option Mint and PCLOS .

How do I get the boot loader to give me the third option and whats a good boot loader to use?

A few instructions to get me there would be appreciated

You need to add any additional OS's into the menu.lst file located in /boot/grub/menu.lst

Guessing grub is installed on your Mint partition you need to add the other OS to this file... First I need more info on which OS is not showing up in grub.

From there its easy to add and customize grub.

Sorry my XP installation is missing

OK this should be easy from here... Boot to your Mint partition and open up a terminal and type this command:

From there you should see an output similar to this:
Before we can add Xp we need to know which drive and partition XP is installed on. I am assuming that you have XP installed on a separate drive.

First run the command above and post the output.

Then I'll tell you what is needed to add to your menu.lst file.

I think manwithaplan has you on the right track. Just remember that "dual booting" is just a term to indicate multiple operating systems on one box. Your "triple booting" is the same as dual booting, just with 3 OSs.

Nope all three operating systems are on the same HD is this a problem?
Also, provided I am not complicating your response where or when is the virtual box option a better approach assuming I want to try different Linux flavours and I don't want the kids internet activity bringing home viruses, etc.

If I understand your situation, you originally had Linux Mint and xp on your drive and were able to boot both using the Mint Grub bootloader??

You then installed PCLinux and still have Mint and xp but can not boot xp but can boot Mint and Pclinux??

Assuming this is accurate, you probably installed the PCLinux bootloader to the master boot record, overwriting the Mint bootloader which was previously booting your system.

It would help if we knew which system you were using to boot, Mint or PCLinux. The splash screen on boot is distinctive and you should be able to tell by that. It would be beneficial to run the "fdisk -l" command as root (sudo In Mint) and post the output here showing your actual partition information.

Shouldn't be a problem... Just need to know the fdisk layout so I can help you with adding the XP entry into grub...

Yancek is right about the grub install. You'll most likely need to boot into PCLinux and edit grub from there. I seemed to overlook that. Still an easy fix.

run this command and cut and paste the output:

The splash screen is PC linus OS

Output is:

[root@localhost clement]# sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x11c911c9

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 392 3148708+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2 393 19457 153139612+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 393 1411 8185086 83 Linux
/dev/hdb6 1849 4398 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb7 4399 19080 117933133+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdb8 19081 19457 3028221 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb9 1412 1522 891576 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb10 1523 1848 2618563+ 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order
[root@localhost clement]#

In your PCLinuxOS /boot/grub/menu.lst file add the following entry for xp:

title xp
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

Curious that your only drive is "hdb"??

Could I solve the problem using GAG boot loader is it better and what issue If I only have 1 drive "hdb" I do not understand the significance. I think this is a 500 Gb disk should I be breaking it up into 3 or 4 drives?

The significance is that naming conventions for Linux usually refer to hard drives with letters such as 'sda' (first hard drive), 'sdb' (second hard drive), then partitions are sda1 (first hard drive, first partition), sda2 (first hard drive, second partition).

In you last post, you ask if you should be breaking up your 500GB hard drive into separate 'drives'. When we refer to drives, we mean an actual physical hard drive. So no, you can't divide your hard drive into more drives but you can make a number of partitions. This is a frequent point of confusion for windows users because the windows 'C:\' partition is also referred to as a 'drive' because windows is usually sold/installed as the only partition on a drive.

So back to the initial point, if you have only one hard drive, it should be named 'sda' or 'hda', the 'a' being important as the first letter of the alphabet which is how the drives are named. You have only one drive and it is named 'sdb' which would seem to indicate it is the second drive so I was curious about where the other drive is. USB, external?? no longer attached?

Also, just re-read your earlier post and your fdisk output shows the sdb drive as 160GB (take a look) and your last post states "I think this is a 500 Gb disk". Which is it. This isn't really that complicated but you're not giving enough info. Post your menu.lst file from PCLinux.

ok, my USB stick was installed so I am thinking that explains why we are getting hdb, similarly I should have examined the file its 160 GB.

This leaves me asking where is my menu.lst file located in pclos. I will start looking

/boot/grub/menu.lst

You need to log in as root user to edit this file.