bios hangs

[lewbaseball07]

i cant triple boot ubuntu,xp,and vista

i can dual boot any of them but i cant triple boot!!!

when i try to triple boot my bios hangs and doesnt even get past the main bios screen and i cant go into the bios or even do anything...it locks up!!

when i short the cmos and unplug both drives the bios doesnt hang

when i plug the drive in with vista and xp on it it HANGS

WHAT TO DO?!?!

specs are in sig...i dont have it overclocked currently

 

[darkstar782]

Ok.

Problem = 3 OSes each with its own bootloader.

XP bootloader doesn't know wtf Vista is, and wont boot it. Being M$, it wont boot a Linux based OS.

Vista bootloader will poot XP fine. Being M$, it wont boot a Linux based OS.

Ubuntu bootloader (whichever one you are using... GRUB? LiLo?) will boot XP fine. It doesn't know wtf Vista is.

The problem is that no matter what your choice of bootloader, none of them can boot all three OSes.

Solution = keep them separate.

Assuming 2 HDDs:

1. Install XP on HDD-1.
2. Install Vista in dual boot on HDD-1.
3. Disconnect HDD-1 from the PC, connect HDD-2 (this is so the Linux doesn't see the windows disk during install and mess with it.)
3. Install Linux on HDD-2.
4. Reconnect all HDDs.

Then to switch between the XP/Vista hdd and the Linux hdd, you just change the boot order in the BIOS. This means going through the BIOS, which is a hassle, but alot of PCs also have a Hotkey to get a boot list up (F8 on the Asus P5W DH). Or, if you try disabling all boot devices, they may offer you a list to select which drive to bot from.

If you prefer, XP+Linux can be on a disk, and Vista on its own disk.

D

 

[lewbaseball07]

weird...but...when i boot and turn off the hdd with linux the bios resumes memory tests..hdd searches...etc..and boots into grub and grub says error 21(meaning cant see linux)...then when i restart everything works fine and i can triple boot(goes into grub then if i select vista it will go into the vista bootloader...where i can select from xp or vista!!!(everything works fine then)


WTF?!?!?!?!?!!?!??!

 

[lewbaseball07]

i also wanted to add mac osx...dont know how the hell iam goin to do that...with all this trouble triple booting...

 

[darkstar782]

Why stop there? Solaris, OS/2 Warp 4.52.....