Quad boot with Leopard, Snow Leopard, Windows XP & Win 7

[Aesop69]

I have Leopard & Snow on a GUID Partitioned HDD.

Win XP on a MBR Partitioned HDD.

Windows 7 on a MBR Partitioned HDD.

 

I can only boot into the XP drive if I set it as the first boot device.

 

Booting into the GUID I can use Chameleon to boot into all the drives except XP.

 

Do I have to boot into the XP drive & use chain0 to jump to the GUID?

 

Is there a way to boot XP from the Chameleon screen?

 

p.s. Where should I put a Ubuntu Partition? (Drive with GUID or MBR)

[chokia]

Try Boot Think 2.3 and Install Ubuntu using Wubi to another partition next to XP

 

Assuming you have 3 HDDs :-

 

HD01 Leopard (Boot Think 2.3 installed here and HD0 boot 1st)

HD02 Snowleopard

HD11 XP

HD12 Ubuntu (install using WUbi from XP)

HD21 Windows 7

[srs5694]

My preferred solution to this sort of thing is GRUB, which is the most common Linux boot loader. GRUB includes options to swap drive IDs, as seen by the BIOS. In the GRUB configuration file, it'd look something like this:

 

title Windows XP
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive

 

To use GRUB in this way, you'd either install it to your Linux partition, leaving Chameleon as the primary boot loader, in which case to boot XP you'd need to boot Linux (really GRUB) from Chameleon and then select Windows XP from the GRUB menu; or you'd install GRUB as your primary boot loader and have it boot Chameleon as the secondary boot loader for Mac OS only. In the latter case, you might need to back up your MBR and redirect the boot process through the MBR backup. At least, in my one GRUB/Chameleon system, GRUB can't boot Chameleon's second stage directly; it needs to go through Chameleon's first stage (normally stored in the Chameleon MBR). Sorry if this sounds like Greek to you; boot loaders can be a bit of a mess, I'm afraid. Ask for clarification if you need it.

 

As to where to install Ubuntu, Linux itself can handle both MBR and GPT drives. I don't know offhand how the Ubuntu installer reacts to GPT drives, though; if the installer doesn't recognize GPT drives, it may be hard to install directly to GPT. FWIW, I'm typing this on an all-GPT Ubuntu system, but I installed it by copying it to a new GPT drive from an older MBR configuration.