trillzqrillz Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 I have an HP dv6835nr laptop obviously with Vista installed, I've owned it for a couple of months and started getting interested in OSX86. I understand that to dual boot Vista and OSX, i would have to format and pretty much get rid of everything, but I just recently installed Ubuntu so I'm now dual booting Ubuntu and Vista. Is there any way of using the Linux GRUB loader to boot OSX as well without having to redo my whole Vista partition? ANY help on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/136232-triple-boot-with-grub-bootloader-question/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
tha_toadman Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 In my experience, you'd want to format and install in the following order: OSX (and split it to have 3 partitions - they'll be equal but you can resize if needed), then Vista, and finally Linux. With Linux (ubuntu) going in last, it will use GRUB to boot the machine. The next thing to do would be to go into GRUB with your favorite CLI editor (vim is what i like to use)...and edit the file to make all 3 OSes boot. There *might* be ALOT of trial-n-error rebooting before you get things figured out. To answer your question...it might be possible to leave your Ubuntu and Vista partitions intact but personally, I would reformat and start everything over from scratch. Then you'll be able to do it right the first time and know everything's been done correctly. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/136232-triple-boot-with-grub-bootloader-question/#findComment-964769 Share on other sites More sharing options...
shavex Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 I understand that to dual boot Vista and OSX, i would have to format and pretty much get rid of everything Whereever you heard that, its wrong. The Vista partition can be resized without losing any data. Is there any way of using the Linux GRUB loader to boot OSX as well without having to redo my whole Vista partition? ANY help on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Yep! I have that on my computer! Just use GParted and resize partitions to make room for OSX, then format it to FAT32, then go through the OSX install selecting that FAT32 partition. Then the grub menu.lst add on would be something like title Mac OS X root (hd0,0) makeactive chainloader +1 Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/136232-triple-boot-with-grub-bootloader-question/#findComment-964775 Share on other sites More sharing options...
trillzqrillz Posted November 13, 2008 Author Share Posted November 13, 2008 Wow. Thanks for all this help. I plan on doing this but I'm going to wait to get my external so I can back up my drive in case anything goes wrong. I'm a n00b to all this so so far all of this is very appreciated. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/136232-triple-boot-with-grub-bootloader-question/#findComment-965082 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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