Tri-booting (windows, linux, windows)

[Bobby S.]

I curently have windows XP and SuSE dualbooting off of a single harddrive. The bootloader is Grub.

I would like to make SuSE a little smaller and add a different version of windows to tri-boot. I know that you are supposed to install the windows OS's first then install linux OS's after but is it possible to install windows after linux?

I also have a small, empty HD that I could add to the system but would prefer it if I could install another version of windows on the same HD.

[deltaflyer]

yes you can do this. once done,use your suse disk to re-install grub & it should pick up all the other o.s.'s

andy

[Bobby S.]

How would I go about installing windows? I don't want to erase the copy I already have on or SuSE... Doesn't windows always try to install on the first partition?

[budman7]

When you start the install you will be asked which partition you woud like to install to.

You will have to have the partitions setup beforehand as windos does not have any partitioning tools that you can use during the install.

[d38dm8nw81k1ng]

i think qtparted would be your best friend here. just shrink the SuSE partition and keep the free space on the end, then you can just install windows to that free space. run the suse automatic repair tool (on the install disc) and it will fix grub for you.

[Bobby S.]

Okay, I will make the needed changes to the partitions and give it a go. Thanks alot for all the help guys.

[Bobby S.]

Ran into a slight problem. I now have the windows bootloader but want the grub one. I tried to restore the grub bootloader form the restore feature on the SuSE 10.0 install cd but don't know the command to restore grub. Could someone tell me what the command to restore grub is or what steps need to be taken.

[oz]

Here's a tutorial written by a fellow member. I've never read it so don't know if it will help, or not:

/forum/newbie/44962-good-tribooting-tutorial-i-wrote.html

[cheetahman]

This guide will help you better than mine because it doesn't go in depth on GRUB

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/sho...highlight=GRUB

Re-installing Grub

Now that your safely back into Linux, you'll want to get Grub back onto your hard disk's MBR. This is simply done by opening a terminal window as root (or as your normal user and entering 'su -' to become the root/super user) and enter the "grub-install" command. This command takes a single parameter, which is the name of the hard disk that you want Grub to be installed on. Now that we are in Linux, the hard disk naming convention is no longer the (hd0,1) format that we used in grub, but the one that Linux uses. This starts with /dev/ and is followed by 'hd' and then a letter from 'a' to 'd' .

So, if you normally boot from your first (and perhaps only) hard disk, you will use "/dev/hda". If you normally boot off your second hard disk you will use either "/dev/hdb" or "/dev/hdc" or /dev/hdd" depending upon which IDE cable it is plugged into and whether it is the master or slave on that cable (a and b are master and slave on IDE1 ,while c and d are master and slave on IDE2).

Code:

[root@localhost nerderello]# /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda Installation finished. No error reported. This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map. Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect, fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'. # this device map was generated by anaconda (fd0) /dev/fd0 (hd0) /dev/hda (hd1) /dev/hdc


In the above example I have installed Grub on the MBR on my first hard disk. The messages generated also show that I have three write-able disks on my PC - "fd0" being my floppy diskette drive, "hd0" being hard disk number 1 (remember the counting starts at zero), and "hd1" being my second hard disk drive (which, we can see from the "c" in /dev/hdc is the master on the IDE2 cable).

And that's it. You now have Grub back where you want it. Now, create a Linux rescue diskette, so that you won't have to go through that little lot again (
use the "mkbootdisk" command to create one).

[cheetahman]

Also which Windows version are you going to add to Triboot