Is it possible to triple boot

[DeChache]

Well this summer when I was home from school I wrote over my linux partition with Vista Beta 2 and Now that I'm back at school I need linux again and well is it possible to install linux on my storage drive. I already made the partition. But before I screw up my two windows installs I want to see if it can be done if it cant Ill just axe Vista and boot Xp and Linux.

Thanks for the help.

[djnes]

It is certainly possible to triple boot...and I think the Windows installs should be done first. My only recommendation is to one a clearly defined partition for each OS.

[eeyrjmr]

tripple boot,quad,... you are only limited by the number of OS's and the amount of HD space

djnes is right in getting Windows installed first for a hassle-free triple-boot setup.

you can install linux first and then the windows, or Xp, Linux, vista or...

basically the only problem with installing a windows OS after a Linux OS is that MS are so arragant that they put their own bootloader on (no problem) BUT it wont respect the existance on any non-MS operating systems

with installing Linux last you can replace the MS bootloader with GRUB and the distro-installer will configure grub/lilo to dual boot


NTLDR can be used as the linux bootloader BUT it is alot of effert and not flexable enough
if a MS OS is installed last you can still recover GRUB by booting a liveCD, chrooting and re-writing the MBR - not to much hassle

[DeChache]

Sounds good last ? will installing linux to my storage drive work. Because my main drive is only 80 gigs and well I dont have enough room for a 3 OS on it.

[Fark_Maniac]

I'd vote for a vmware virtual "server" of Linux. Run both OSs at the same time and you won't have to worry about MBRs and MFT being corrupted/written over. I run XP and have two Ubuntu and a XP virtual pc...and it is free to do so now.

[odoe]

I had Win2K, Win98, RedHat and BeOS all on one machine once. Then I fubar'd something up and lost the MBR, but yeah, you can boot as much as you want.

If you do a google search for BOOT MANAGER, you'll find a ton of results. I can't remember what I used, but I think I had grabbed it from an episode of The Screensavers.

[DeChache]

I'd vote for a vmware virtual "server" of Linux. Run both OSs at the same time and you won't have to worry about MBRs and MFT being corrupted/written over. I run XP and have two Ubuntu and a XP virtual pc...and it is free to do so now.

So how would I go about doing that just download the "software" for lack of a better term and then set it up.

I googled vmware and found www.vmware.com is this what you were refering to and then download this. http://www.vmware.com/products/server/ sounds like what I want because it will be used for software delvelopment.

Sorry for all the noob questions.

[Fark_Maniac]

that's exactly what you want...

to accelerate your video, install the "VMware tools" which is easy on XP but a bit harder to do on Linux...I've yet to figure that part out

Also, backup your virtual hard drives. If you are doing dev work...if you bjork a virtual PC...just re-copy the "hard drive"