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HOWTO: Neatly Triple/Quad Boot The Right Way


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ok this is how to have a triple or quad boot, with xp/vista isolated without having vista's boot loader taking over, and using acronis boot loader in the mix! :(

 

 

1st off you want to get the files list in this post to make your complete osx86 iso with is fixed from the boot issues: http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?sho...;hl=defiant+fix

 

Then make sure you get Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 (Version 2160)

 

Then created the partitions needed the size & whether if your going with triple or quad boots

 

I used gparted: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

 

NOTE: YOU NEED SOME KIND OF partition CREATING BOOTCD!!

 

Create: (Note these are noted as if your are creating Quad boot, but if not then just make sure you create then windows partitions first!;)

 

1 XP NTFS

1 Vista NTFS

1 OSX Fat32

1 ResizerFS Linux

 

 

 

Ok then install xp on 1st partition, after installed used Gparted or boot cd you used to create partitions, then the partition your going to use for vista change that partition to active or boot

 

then restart with the vista disc choose that partition to install vista onto, but select (drive advanced) i think it called, then will let you format the partition that selected, because some partition tools don't partition right for Vista, ok after you install vista and everything is setup

 

Then go ahead and install Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 (Version 2160 or latest one) on vista, then it will ask to reboot after your back on vista then install the os selector then that will ask you to reboot again yup, then you should have xp & vista up on the os selector screen, you select xp it goes into xp with out the vista boot loader asking again if you want to go into xp or vista! and it should work the same if you choose vista in the os selector screen. NEXT..

 

Install OSX 10.4.8 the patched one you created earlier, then after that is installed reboot, you should have a new addition to the os selector it wont say OSX you'll have to rename it that, then go ahead and install your linux distro, then after that do that same change what you need to change in that os selector, and thats it!!!!

 

 

THANKS TO JAS & THE DEFIANT!!!

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A little while ago I tried to dual boot Vista and OS X (Jas 10.4.8). I intalled Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 (Version 2160) and the boot selector would load when starting up. Then I created a partition for OS X and installed it. After restarting my computer now boots straight into OS X with no boot selector.

 

What can i do to get dual boot working?

 

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A little while ago I tried to dual boot Vista and OS X (Jas 10.4.8). I intalled Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 (Version 2160) and the boot selector would load when starting up. Then I created a partition for OS X and installed it. After restarting my computer now boots straight into OS X with no boot selector.

 

What can i do to get dual boot working?

 

 

did you used the patched jas with defaint's patched ido like mentioned here? also did you might want to try to have the osx disc in at the os selector screen then boot from it there.

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A little while ago I tried to dual boot Vista and OS X (Jas 10.4.8). I intalled Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 (Version 2160) and the boot selector would load when starting up. Then I created a partition for OS X and installed it. After restarting my computer now boots straight into OS X with no boot selector.

 

What can i do to get dual boot working?

 

 

Keep pressing F8 before you see the grey apple to use the Darwin bootloader to choose the XP/Vista install

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I'm very new to booting multiple operating systems and I'm trying Linux out for the first time. I will be using Ubuntu and I understand that two partiitons are required, one for the OS and another for the swap file. How would I create partitions for a quad boot in this scenario. Thanks

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If you mean Vista/XP/OSX/Ubuntu, then you'll need an extended partition to be able to accomodate separate swap partition.

Since there can only be four primary partition on that disk, including the extended, then you'll need to make some compromise.

 

OSX is better on a primary partition (less problematic), Vista and XP need to put their boot files on a primary, Ubuntu can be installed on a logical partition, but it will put grub in the mbr/first track (unless you use the 'advanced' install cd that allows putting grub in a local boot sector).

 

One possible config is:

  • primary1: XP
  • primary2: Vista
  • primary3: OSX
  • extended (primary4):
    • logical1: fat32 (small, for Acronis OS Selector; or big for sharing with OSX)
    • logical2: linux swap
    • logical3: Ubuntu
    • logical4: etc...

(see below about logical1)

Of course, apart from the swap, you could put Ubuntu into more than one logical partition (root, users, etc).

You could chose instead to put XP in a logical and Ubuntu in a primary. But then I'll let you figure out in which order and how to install all these.

 

And if you're not on a laptop, the best would be to just get a secondary disk, to avoid (somewhat) the mbr limitations, and put your OS's as near the beginning of the drive as possible.

 

But I want to add some friendly suggestions to puppetj: If you really want this to be a guide to quad-boot, you should be more detailed on how you would sugget installing a linux distro; you were a bit too quick on that point, and people might wonder where to put the swap... You should also clarify whether the partitions you listed are primary or logical, etc.

 

Two last notes:

  1. If you use Acronis OS Selector (AOSS), do create the Acronis bootable disc from Acronis Disk Director: it might be very helpful later if you want to reactivate or reinstall AOSS after some mess.
  2. You could create a small fat32 logical partition at the begining of the extended partition just for installing AOSS there; or bigger to share files with OSX if you haven't installed MacFuse.
    It is preferable to put AOSS in a non-system fat32 partition: that way, even if your xp/vista partition are gone because of who knows what, the AOSS files will still boot the whole shebang.

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As was said above, Ubuntu will put grub in the mbr, unless you use the 'advanced' install cd that allows putting grub in a local boot sector (for some weird reason, the ubuntu developers decided to force grub on the mbr in any normal installation, whereas other major distros give the choice to users).

Depending on how/what order the OS'es were installed, the grub stage1 in mbr was overwritten.

 

One possibility is to try to write grub to ubuntu's bootsector: something like grub-install /dev/sda2 if you want to install to sda2, or grub-install /dev/hda3 to install to hda3, etc; adjust to your case, depending on where was ubuntu installed. You can use the LiveCD for this. Google grub-install, or check linux/ubuntu forums for more details please (and specify to them it's for bootsector install, not mbr install).

Then, hopefully, AOSS will catch it up and chainload it.

 

NOTE: do CREATE the Acronis Bootable CD, in case you want to reactivate AOSS.

 

An alternative would be to dump AOSS and use only GRUB. You'd then have to restore grub, and edit grub's menu.lst accordingly. Search InsanelyMac forum for 'grub' to get a handful of examples.

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