multi-boot set up in grub.conf, help
 

I very new to linux, so I spend a lot of time reading on it and trying things. Right now i'm testing things in VMWare workstation, to be safe. My ultimate goal is to be able to boot 5 OS. (XP, Vista, 2003sever, OSX 10.4.6 X86, and Turbolinux fuji 11).

I created 3 virtual IDE HDDs. Installed XP first then Vista, because this is what I have in my own PC. Then Installed 2003 (had to do a repair boot for vista after that.

Then Installed OSX. Things got messed up there. At that time I was able to boot in both Vista and OSX with not problem, but when i tryed to boot into XP, it would boot into 2003 instead, and when i try to boot into 2003 in the boot menu it doesnt detect it. I couldnt figured out where the problem was. the boot.ini seemed ok (listing both xp and 2003). I used EasyBCD to add OSX in the menu.

boot.ini:
http://i6.tinypic.com/5449x0m.jpg

I left it like that. Thinking I might get grub a try.

I installed Turbolinux with to problem. but grub gived me only two options at boot. Linux and Windows. at first windows didnt boot when selecting it. so that's when i decided to do some extra reading and digging.

Here how I have my HDD set up:
http://i2.tinypic.com/4l8zs0j.jpg
hda1 or (hd0,0) is XP
hda2 or (hd0,1) is Vista
hdb1 or (hd1,0) is 2003
hdd1 or (hd2,0) is OSX
hdd2, hdd3, hdd4 are use for linux.

A note before i precede, menu.lst does not exist. it seems to be using grub.conf instead.

I tryed many different ways to edit it and this is how i left it after hours of frustrating. I didnt add osx in the menu yet, cause i prefered to fix the windows part first.
http://i19.tinypic.com/54b3d44.jpg


Ok the menu shows up. when I select Turbolinux, it boots linux. when I click on windows XP, it goes into the windows booter loader menu (guessing from the original easybcd, with the same original problem i had before installing linux. When I click on either vista or 2003 it leads to errors. like disk read error or ntldr error sometime.

I don't know if i forget to mention anything else. This basicly my problem.

The article on booting at my site might be useful (link below)

Basically, I would stick with GRUB and not mess around with boot.ini or any of the other Windows stuff.

Once GRUB is in the mbr, then don't install the bootloader when you install other systems (except of coures with Windows which does not give you that option.

Keep in mind that any Windows not on the first partition of the first drive will need the "map" command in menu.lst (AKA boot.conf)

One recognized authority on booting is Saikee. One of his more notorious articles is linked in my site--or search here at LQ