Success story - Quad boot

[HaTaX]

It was a bit of a battle but I got it all worked out. I can now pick from Vista Ultimate x64, XP x64, Ubuntu 7.10, and OS X 10.5.1 to boot from my external HD.

 

This is done on an abit IP35 Pro with an E8400 C2D.

 

I have WinXP 32 bit installed on my main HD and wanted to test out all of the 64 bit oses that are "mainstream" today for testing and development work. The above list seemed to cover all bases and I included XP 64 bit because even though it's older, it's my OS of choice right now mainly because of support. So I wanted to keep my base install exactly as it was and do all of this on an eSATA 250GB hd I have looking for a purpose. Problem being is that the eSATA on my MB is run through the JMicron ports, proved to not be an issue at all really.

 

 

I used the Kalyway disc to setup the partitions and format the first partition for HFS+ journaling. Then setup 5 additional partitions, one for each OS and then an extra for storage between the OSes, and one additional for the ubuntu swap partition. I named each one of the partitions with the name of the OS that was going on them so I could keep track of which was which. When I used the Kalyway disc the only way I could get it to startup at all was to use the SATA dvd burner I had on my main SATA connections so I enabled it and disconnected the internal HDs.

 

After I got the partitions made I went to install XP 64 bit, that failed and didn't want to boot due to confusion with the partitions and the boot loader, I left it alone for now and installed Vista. Vista installed fine so I went to re-install XP again and this time it booted correctly but had taken over vista's boot loader. Quick boot into the Vista DVD and a startup repair fixed that problem. After this I downloaded a very helpful program called BCDEdit that allows you to manage the Vista bootloader system, it found the XP install and added it to the list.

 

Now on to getting Ubuntu installed and working. I got ubuntu installed but once again it had stolen the bootloader from Vista, so another boot into Vista to fix that. After I got the vista bootloader working, I could no longer boot Ubuntu as it wasn't a choice in Vista's bootloader. Using BCDEdit I added a linux entry to the list and filled in the fields for my install. After all this I could pick all 3 OSes in the Vista bootloader. One warning, the grub installer will see the vista partition and setup a script to load it, I would remove that line from your menu.lst file as if it runs it will change which partition is active and which bootloader gets chosen. A few times along this ride my active / boot partition got messed up but it was nothing a quick boot into the GPartEd live CD couldn't fix.

 

Now that those three were installed came the challenging part, getting the Kalyway DVD installed and retain the other OSes. I went ahead and did an install and got OSX booting up and happy. Now when I chose my other OSes from within those menus they would all complain about not being able to find their boot files. At this point I decided to use the Vista bootloader for initial boot because it easy to configure and pretty powerful. I used the Vista DVD to get it to the point where Vista would boot up and life was good there. Then I did a repair install of XP and once again set the bootloader back to Vista upon completion. With both of the windows OSes up I checked on Ubuntu. As long as Ubuntu was started with the NeoGrub loader utility used by BCDEdit it started up just fine, even though it throws up alot of errors as it starts. I edited the menu.lst file on the Ubuntu drive as the NeoGrub loader was reading it and setup Ubuntu to just boot up quietly.

 

After I got them all settled down I started to work on the OSX loading from the Vista bootloader, which was pretty easy. Choose Mac OSX from the OS type and use the bootloader utility provided. When I choose the OSX menu option at boot it ends up at the Darwin/X86 loader and the only part I haven't been able to change here is what the default OS is. Currently it defaults to the partition marked active. So to boot OSX I have to press the up arrow twice (OSX has the first partition, second is active with vista), but then life is good and I've got the ability to switch to any OS easily.

 

As a bonus I setup two bios configs that turn the internal SATA drives off and turn on the motherboards audio and ethernet. OSX doesn't like my Intel Pro/1000 PT (82575 based) and my Audigy Platnium, so I use the built in stuff for that. To save and restore those settings in the bios takes about 6 key presses and 5 seconds. Nice and easy and now I can keep this stuff separate from my daily duty box.

 

All of those OSes are running on the JMicron controller and I have no problems to report with it..... yet.... (It's only been 2 days)

 

Just thought I'd throw this out here to show it can be done and if anyone is fighting with it, maybe this can help point you in the right direction. I know alot of what I did was redundant but I wanted to make sure everything was working before I started adding more to the pile.