Tri-booting

[SlickDan15]

i want to install XP, vista, and ubuntu onto my desktop.

i would like to "tri-boot" these OS's. is there a specific order i should do this in so i get a boot menu for all three when turning on my machine?

any help is much appreciated!

[awaj]

I was confused about which is installed first, XP or Vista usually. I think it's supposed to be XP, Vista, and then Ubuntu. If XP and Vista install with out a problem, but you can't get Grub to work right, it's a simple fix with in the terminal.

[Paul Komski]

Suggest the following (in the following order) as the simplest approach.
1. Intall XP to a dedicated partition of an appropriate size leaving enough unallocated space for the other two OSes.
2. Install Vista and during the installation set-up create a new partition to hold it leaving the remaining space for Ubuntu and/or whatever.
3. Install Ubuntu and let it utilise all the remaing unallocated space in the way it deems best whilst also accepting the default position of the GRUB boot menu onto the MBR.

A different more elaborate approach is to make a small (1 MB) PRIMARY FAT partition at the start of the drive (to hold any boot manager later on) and two more PRIMARY partitions for the two versions of Windows. Then install the Windows' OSes in either order to the next two partitions. Before each installation mark the intended partition as Active and Hide all the other ones.

Only then install Ubuntu and, as before, let it partition the unallocated space, but ensure you do not install GRUB to the MBR but rather to its own root partition.

Finally install the boot manager of your choice (SBM, BiNG, XOSL) and let it organise which of the three OSes to startup each time.