Triple boot situation.

bkz81 · 02-14-2006, 11:15 PM

Hello all. I' am considering doing a triple boot with a new system i got. I'm thinking of putting Windows XP 32bit, then XP 64bit, and last but not least SUSE 10.0 64bit. My question is which OS do install first, then second, and last? Thank you for your time on this matter.

AMD64 4200 Dual Core
2GB Dual Channel PC3200
250GB SATA HD
DVD Burner
Nvidia 7800GTX 256MB PCI-E

DanTaylor · 02-14-2006, 11:29 PM

Why would you want both xp 64 bit and 32 bit?? This does not make much sense to me.You should probably just stick with one copy of xp 64 bit and one of SUSE.

J.W. · 02-15-2006, 02:02 AM

You will want to install Win XP (32 bit) first, as it does not play well with other OS's. I have no idea about dual booting Win XP and Win XP 64 bit, but suspect that might be an issue if both of them expect to be on the first psrtition of the primary master (ie, /dev/hda1). SuSE 10 can be installed last, no problem.

I suppose my best advice is to just to try in the order you suggested: XP 32, XP 64, SuSE. Give it a shot and see what happens. Personally, dual booting different versions of Windows can be problematic, because they always attempt to install into /dev/hda1. Assuming you go ahead with this, please post back with updates as to how it went, it no doubt would be of interest to many people

saikee · 02-15-2006, 02:35 AM

Not done one with a XP64 before but not expecting any resistance as I have booted 3 XP together before.

I would tackle it this way. You need a Linux Live CD with Grub support so that when boot it up you can invoke a Grub shell to hide any partition you want. Say if it is partition hda1, which is known to Grub as (hd0,0) as it counts from 0, you can make it invisible to MS systems by

Code:

hide (hd0,0)

to unhide it you just use "unhide" instead of "hide" and so on.

I would therefore install the first XP, which one isn't really matter but a MS system must reside in a primary partition say hda1 (known as "C"). Have it operational. Then I hide it.

I would proceed to install the next XP in a primary paritition again and have it operational say in hda2(again known as "C"). No need to hide it this time.

The last system should be the Linux installed in hda3 with a swap partition in hda4. If I plan to have more I would put the swap in a logical partition hda5 so that I can continue in future with hda6, hda7, hda8.....

When Suse Linux is operational I edit its /boot/grub/menu.lst to make sure it has these lines to boot the 2 XP

Code:

title XP64 in hda1
unhide (hd0,0)
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

title XP32 in hda2
unhide (hd0,1)
hide (hd0,0)
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

You can afford hda2 visible to become "D" while operating hda1. However in using hda2 you need to hide hda1 because any visible MS system in front of hda2 will grab the "C" drive and the hda2 will become unboootable (because it was installed in a "C" before).

Pretty straight forward. You can run as many MS systems in the PC. For multi disks environment you need to use the "map" statement to alter the boot disk order "on-th-fly".

The 100+ systems link in my signature has a Grub menu booting 3 Dos and 3 Windows to look at as an example.

bkz81 · 02-15-2006, 07:31 AM

The reason why i would want to do someting like this is because, i may have problems with certains drivers like my printer, and various other things. So i figured i try out the 64bit version with a triple boot and see how it turns out. I am still in the process of downloading the 64bit version as well as OpenSUSE 10.0, so i'll keep you all updated on what happens with this. Thank you all for your time on this matter.