[Guide] How to Triple Boot OS X, Ubuntu, and Vista/7.

[Krishna21]

Hello people of earth and beyond!

 

Today we will learn how to triple boot OS X, Ubuntu, and Vista OR 7 (Your Choice).

 

First off, you need to have the following:

• OS X Leopard Retail DVD, or Distro (Kalyway, iPC, iDeneb, Leo4All, iATKOS, etc.
  
• Windows Vista or Windows 7 DVD
  
• Ubuntu Live CD (NO DVD! CD ONLY!)
  
• Chameleon v2 RC2 Installer (Link included below)
  
• Time
  

 

Before starting, figure out how many MB your UBUNTU partition would be! To do this, go to Google and search XX GB to MB. XX indicated how many GB you want to use for Ubuntu. In this example, I will be using 50GB.

 

Step 1:

 

Boot your computer up, having your OS X DVD in the drive. In setup, head to Disk Utility.

Make three partitions in this EXACT ORDER.

 

Partition 1 - Windows

Partition 2 - Mac OS X

Partition 3 - Ubuntu

 

Format partition one as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and format both Windows and Ubuntu as MS-DOS (FAT). Leave the partition scheme as GUID Partition Table for all of the partitons. Then Apply the changes.

 

Step 2:

 

You've created your partitions. Now select your Mac Partition as your destination for OS X, and if click the "Customize" button if you have to (Like if your using a distro, select the things like kernels and drivers like you usually would). Install OS X, and get through the post-setup (After the "Welcome" movie). Now reboot, and this time, have your Windows Vista/7 DVD in the drive.

 

Step 3:

 

Now we have our Mac partition ready. In the Windows setup, use a Custom installation, select your Windows partition, (if you followed this guide exactly, it should be partition 1), then click Advanced at the bottom, and then click Format. Now install to your Windows partition, and go through the post-setup like you did for OS X. After setup, pop in your Ubuntu Live CD and reboot.

 

Step 4:

 

On boot, you should be at the Ubuntu screen. Select Ubuntu installation, and then go through it, and stop on step 4 (It's indicated what step number you are on at the bottom). Step 4 is the Destination screen. On the screen for Destination, click "Specify Partitions Manually (Advanced)". On the partition table, you will see multiple areas of free spaces. You want to edit the partition for Ubuntu. So select your Ubuntu partition, which should be /dev/sda4 if you followed this guide exactly, and click "Change". Now resize the partition so you have space left for your SWAP partition. In this guide, we'll use 4GB for SWAP. So as stated before, you should have learnt how many MB your Ubuntu partition will be. So take that number, and subtract 4096 from it. With that number, change it. For the "Use As", select Ext3 Journal file System, check mark the "Format/Partition" box. For Mount Point, select /. Click OK, and continue. Now you should be back at the screen with the partitions. Select the LARGEST chunk of free space, which should be 4000MB or More. Right click and select New Partition. For Use as, select SWAP Area, and click Ok, leave all the other fields blank. Now go onto the last step, it should be called "Ready to Install". Click "Advanced". Change the location of the Boot Loader to /dev/sda4 (If you followed the instructions specifically for this guide). Now Install.

 

Step 5:

 

Whew. Step 4 was a lot, wasn't it? But we don't have to worry about that now. So when Ubuntu if finished, have your OS X DVD in to boot to your OS X environment. Configure your INTERNET with whatever hack/fix/etc. you have to do, just have your internet up. Now download the link I posted at the bottom. Once it's done, access the "Chameleon" folder and use the Installer in the folder. Our boot loader is now installed, yay.

 

Step 6:

 

Reboot your PC, and have your Windows DVD in the drive. In the installer, go to the Installation Type screen, and use Shift+F10 on your keyboard. Command Prompt should be here. Type the following, pushing Enter on your keyboard after each phrase:

 

diskpart

list disk

select disk 0

list partition

select partition 2

active

 

Now exit command prompt, and head to the screen where you clicked "Install Now". On the bottom, there's a button saying "Repair Your Computer". It should scan and find an error, it asks if you want it to fix it, select "Repair and Restart". Now reboot, without anything in the Drive (Remove your Windows DVD).

 

Step 7:

 

Almost done! Upon boot Chameleon should show up, boot into Windows and on Windows open Command Prompt. Type the following, pushing enter after each phrase:

 

disk part

list disk

select disk 0

list partition

select partition 4

active

 

 

Congratulations!! You now have a successful Triple Boot!