[PenguinXtra]

Ok, so as of right now I have two OS installs on my laptop. I have an install of Windows Vista Business x64 and an install of Ubuntu Hardy Heron 7.04. This has been working great for as of now, but recently I picked up a MIDI Controller to use in Ableton 7, unfortunately there are no 64 bit drivers for the controller. This means I am going to need a 32 bit OS. I need to install XP or Vista x86 over the top of these installs without formatting. I spent a great deal of time getting Vista x64 and Hardy x64 getting properly configured on this laptop and I do not care to do it again, so formatting these partitions is not an option. I would also like to preserve the MBR. So my question is how would I go about putting a third OS install on this machine without wiping GRUB's master boot record? I know some of you gurus know a way to do this, so any advice would be more than welcome

[Jonathan183]

My suggestion is ... get a copy of SuperGrub and check it works Resize existing partitions using either the Ubuntu live CD or PartedMagic live CD (or similar - but do not recommend using Partition Magic for this ). Mount Ubuntu root and modify uuid references in /etc/fstab either to device names eg /dev/sda1 or check/correct uuid values.
Install the Windows system you want - it will overwrite MBR. Fix Windows / Linux boot using Supergrub CD.

[PenguinXtra]

Super GRUB seems like a good solution, I have resized my partitions and everything, but im not quite sure what you mean by this...

Mount Ubuntu root and modify uuid references in /etc/fstab either to device names eg /dev/sda1 or check/correct uuid values.

Could you elaborate on this please?

[Jonathan183]

If you open a terminal and type

sudo cat /etc/fstab

you will see your fstab entries ... by default Ubuntu will use uuid to refer to these, the uuid tends to change when you resize partitions so you need to either use something like device reference for the partition reference or update the uuid reference to the correct value ...
Post the output of the command and I'll show you what I mean.

[PenguinXtra]

a cat /etc/fstab shows the following entries

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=4, mode=620 0 0
shm /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=14, devmode=0660 0 0
/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 auto defaults 0 0 #harddisk
/dev/sda2 /media/sda2 ntfs-3g defaults 0 0 #harddisk
/dev/sda4 /media/sda4 auto defaults 0 0 #harddisk
/dev/hda /media/cdrom1 auto defaults,ro 0 0 #harddisk

Gparted is still in the process of resizing and I am still booted under the PartedMagic Live disk, but thats what it lists as of right now. I had to nuke the first partition which was a 76mb fat16 partition dell uses for their media software, it was taking up a primary partition slot and I needed that for the new OS. Then I moved the NTFS partition to sda1, moved the swap partition up to sda2, the ext3 partition to sda3, and I created a new fat32 partition for xp in sda4. This should work out right?

[Jonathan183]

fstab already uses device references ... must be 7.10 that made the change to uuid ... you don't need to change fstab

I would probably have nuked swap and created an extended partition. That way you can create additional logical partitions rather than being limited by the 4 primary partitions ... but thats your call. I would also keep the utils that the machine came with as well. If you think you might want additional partitions I would create the extended partition ... you can always put swap and home partitions onto it when you want. I find it handy to keep user data and the OS separate.

Ed: just re-read your post ... your not in Ubuntu ... example fstab with uuid replaced here - code used to replace uuid entries in bold.

[jonathan@Desktop-pc ~]$ cat /media/sda9/etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
# /dev/hda9
#UUID=4b6e0b71-c8cb-4a17-a4e1-985a6be0de88 /               ext3    defaults,erro
rs=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/hda9 /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /dev/hda8
#UUID=9217f1c5-9b10-4e14-bcfe-53eac7fa6cfa /home           ext3    defaults
   0       2
/dev/hda8 /home           ext3    defaults        0       2 

[PenguinXtra]

Thanks for the advice on the extended parts, I think I will stick with all primarys at this point, but if need another I will just move the swap. As far the Dell utils, all it does is play media files without having to boot into an OS. Why you would need that I don't know, but I had no problem getting rid of it.

Ok, so you commented the UUID entries out and added the bolded lines correct?

[Jonathan183]

Yes - good luck with the OS install

[PenguinXtra]

Cool, I will start the OS install once everything in Gparted is done. You have been extremely helpful Johnathan, and I can't thank you enough! I will let you know how the install goes

[Jonathan183]

Your welcome ... hope the install goes to plan - just don't over-write one of your existing partitions ... done that a few times myself