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First post, by RedCharles

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I want it all. Don't question my motives. They are pure and strong.

I just bought a 980x and an Asus P6X58D.

I want to run 10 on an 950 Samsung m2. I want to run 7 off an SSD. And Windows XP off an HDD.

I'm currently dual booting on a 6700k system. It boots to a light blue screen where I can select 7 or 10. Can 10's dual boot work for XP too?

Reply 1 of 15, by Sphere478

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Yes. Here is how.

Boot linux gparted live cd or something

Make three partitions (you have to do this on a single drive)

First format it swap
Second format it swap
Third format it ext4 or whatever (or empty space)

This is to keep the installers from messing with this space.

Quit setup

Boot windows 10 installer and install in the third slot or empty space.

Next boot windows 7 installer and delete the second swap partition install again in the empty space

Next, boot windows xp setup and install in the first partition space

Now pull the hard drive out and take it to another computer and install plop bootloader on the mbr using bootice

That should work for xp and 7 you’ll have to let me know if 10 gives you issues.

Return it to the computer being used. Do not change the drive order that was present during install if using multiple hard drives. (You want this to be the first drive primary master or satamaster channel 1 whatever

It would be a good idea to image the disk at every step because you can’t do a reinstall on any one of those except xp without messing it up next time. If you reinstall xp you have to do plop again

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 3 of 15, by Sphere478

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dr_st wrote on 2021-02-27, 12:02:

You should be able to first install XP, then Win7, then Win10, and let BCD manage it all, on a single drive.

Tried that with ME after installing 7 it only booted to 7

Didn’t try a bcd editor though

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 4 of 15, by StevOnehundred

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dr_st wrote on 2021-02-27, 12:02:

You should be able to first install XP, then Win7, then Win10, and let BCD manage it all, on a single drive.

Yes indeed, done it (and variations with Vista, 8.1 etc) many times.

The only problem is that every time you start XP it'll wipe all of your restore points on the later operating systems.

Reply 5 of 15, by darry

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My approach to multi-booting is to use one boot drive per OS and to use the BIOS' boot drive selection ability to choose which OS to start .

This has proven very reliable for me and avoids pretty much all potential issues related to MBR/bootloader over-writing or corruption . It also makes re-installation easy .

SATA and m.2 SSDs are cheap and time is valuable, IMHO .

Reply 6 of 15, by dr_st

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Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-27, 12:27:

Tried that with ME after installing 7 it only booted to 7

9x/Me is a slightly different thing. NTLDR (2K/XP Bootloader) can recognize and handle the 9x/Me bootloader, but I'm not sure if BCD (NT6 bootloader) can do the same. It can however, handle NTLDR just fine, so in this particular case it should work. However, I have never actually tried such a triple boot myself. I have tried an NT5 OS with an NT6 OS, as well as two NT6 OSes, but not three at a time.

StevOnehundred wrote on 2021-02-27, 12:31:

The only problem is that every time you start XP it'll wipe all of your restore points on the later operating systems.

Really? Why does it happen?

darry wrote on 2021-02-27, 14:00:

My approach to multi-booting is to use one boot drive per OS and to use the BIOS' boot drive selection ability to choose which OS to start .

If one has the ability to use multiple drives, I agree that it is probably the easiest and most robust solution.

https://cloakedthargoid.wordpress.com/ - Random content on hardware, software, games and toys

Reply 7 of 15, by God Of Gaming

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Just install XP first, then 7, and then 10, and it should just work. I did exactly that, i7-3770K on gigabyte z77x-up7 with gtx 980 and auzentech x-fi hthd soundcard, XP on wd velociraptor 10000rpm hdd, win7 on samsung 850 pro, win10 on samsung 860 pro, and a few 2tb 7200rpm toshibas for storage. Worked fine out of the box, didn't have to do anything special to make the triple boot work. Do disable fast startup on win10, it tends to cause data corruption when rebooting to another OS

1999 Dream PC project | DirectX 8 PC project | 2003 Dream PC project

Reply 8 of 15, by Sphere478

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darry wrote on 2021-02-27, 14:00:

My approach to multi-booting is to use one boot drive per OS and to use the BIOS' boot drive selection ability to choose which OS to start .

This has proven very reliable for me and avoids pretty much all potential issues related to MBR/bootloader over-writing or corruption . It also makes re-installation easy .

SATA and m.2 SSDs are cheap and time is valuable, IMHO .

I originally tried this but to keep them from installing boot loaders on the first drive you have to change the order and as soon as you did that the files would point to the wrong drive and they wouldn’t start.

The plop method I described worked very good for me. Obviously there are other ways to do it though. I found having plop is handy. Usb boot, cd boot, floppy boot etc all on the boot screen without having to detour to bios and with a cool font and starfield backdrop

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 9 of 15, by darry

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Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-27, 17:28:
darry wrote on 2021-02-27, 14:00:

My approach to multi-booting is to use one boot drive per OS and to use the BIOS' boot drive selection ability to choose which OS to start .

This has proven very reliable for me and avoids pretty much all potential issues related to MBR/bootloader over-writing or corruption . It also makes re-installation easy .

SATA and m.2 SSDs are cheap and time is valuable, IMHO .

I originally tried this but to keep them from installing boot loaders on the first drive you have to change the order and as soon as you did that the files would point to the wrong drive and they wouldn’t start.

The plop method I described worked very good for me. Obviously there are other ways to do it though. I found having plop is handy. Usb boot, cd boot, floppy boot etc all on the boot screen without having to detour to bios and with a cool font and starfield backdrop

I don't recall ever having an issue with the bootloader being installed in the wrong place. It has been a while since I installed the last one, but I may have proactively disconnected all unnecessary drives during each OS installation. Once the OSes are installed, they leave the bootloaders alone and switching to the drive/OS I want at boot works fine .

I have 3 such setups :

- Windows 10 and CentOS Linux on a UEFI board
- Windows 7 , Windows 10 and CentOS Linux on a legacy BIOS board
- Windows XP and Windows 10 on a Legacy BIOS board

Reply 10 of 15, by willow

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StevOnehundred wrote on 2021-02-27, 12:31:
dr_st wrote on 2021-02-27, 12:02:

You should be able to first install XP, then Win7, then Win10, and let BCD manage it all, on a single drive.

Yes indeed, done it (and variations with Vista, 8.1 etc) many times.

The only problem is that every time you start XP it'll wipe all of your restore points on the later operating systems.

If you start win 7, same thing for windows 10 restore points.
The problem is that launch an old os wipe all restore points on the later os. I don't know why MS have never solve this problem.

Reply 11 of 15, by darry

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willow wrote on 2021-02-27, 19:36:
StevOnehundred wrote on 2021-02-27, 12:31:
dr_st wrote on 2021-02-27, 12:02:

You should be able to first install XP, then Win7, then Win10, and let BCD manage it all, on a single drive.

Yes indeed, done it (and variations with Vista, 8.1 etc) many times.

The only problem is that every time you start XP it'll wipe all of your restore points on the later operating systems.

If you start win 7, same thing for windows 10 restore points.
The problem is that launch an old os wipe all restore points on the later os. I don't know why MS have never solve this problem.

I have disabled the drive(s) with other Windows OS in each Windows installation to avoid them seeing each other. This solves systematic chkdsk issues and I would guess the system restore issue (have not checked this last point as I rely mostly on baremetal backups).

Reply 12 of 15, by Sphere478

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darry wrote on 2021-02-27, 17:40:
I don't recall ever having an issue with the bootloader being installed in the wrong place. It has been a while since I installe […]
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Sphere478 wrote on 2021-02-27, 17:28:
darry wrote on 2021-02-27, 14:00:

My approach to multi-booting is to use one boot drive per OS and to use the BIOS' boot drive selection ability to choose which OS to start .

This has proven very reliable for me and avoids pretty much all potential issues related to MBR/bootloader over-writing or corruption . It also makes re-installation easy .

SATA and m.2 SSDs are cheap and time is valuable, IMHO .

I originally tried this but to keep them from installing boot loaders on the first drive you have to change the order and as soon as you did that the files would point to the wrong drive and they wouldn’t start.

The plop method I described worked very good for me. Obviously there are other ways to do it though. I found having plop is handy. Usb boot, cd boot, floppy boot etc all on the boot screen without having to detour to bios and with a cool font and starfield backdrop

I don't recall ever having an issue with the bootloader being installed in the wrong place. It has been a while since I installed the last one, but I may have proactively disconnected all unnecessary drives during each OS installation. Once the OSes are installed, they leave the bootloaders alone and switching to the drive/OS I want at boot works fine .

I have 3 such setups :

- Windows 10 and CentOS Linux on a UEFI board
- Windows 7 , Windows 10 and CentOS Linux on a legacy BIOS board
- Windows XP and Windows 10 on a Legacy BIOS board

Yeah unplugging the drives will change the order of all but one drive and with some operating systems will mess it up because it points to the primary drive when all hooked up I’m pretty sure linux and win 9x have this problem. Xp may not though because I can recall successfully doing what you describe in the past but not this time.

I bet if you do my method and manually switch the partition to ntfs at each step with a disk utility it can force it to install on a single partition and will avoid the issue with it messing up restore points the operating systems won’t even be connected by bootloader they will all be self contained. Plop just points toward the partition and loads

Sphere's PCB projects.
-
Sphere’s socket 5/7 cpu collection.
-
SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod
-
Tyan S1564S to S1564D single to dual processor conversion (also s1563 and s1562)

Reply 13 of 15, by Errius

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darry wrote on 2021-02-27, 14:00:

My approach to multi-booting is to use one boot drive per OS and to use the BIOS' boot drive selection ability to choose which OS to start .

This has proven very reliable for me and avoids pretty much all potential issues related to MBR/bootloader over-writing or corruption . It also makes re-installation easy .

I do the same, however I recently had a problem where Windows 8.1 saw the Windows 10 disk, and decided to modify the boot record on that disk to boot itself.

Selecting the Windows 10 disk in BIOS just kept booting Windows 8.1, while physically pulling out the W81 disk caused W10 to fail to boot, complaining of a missing device.

I had to use a BCD editor to fix the problem.

This is bad behavior. OSes shouldn't mess with each other like this unless the user tells them to.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 14 of 15, by darry

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Errius wrote on 2021-02-27, 22:03:
I do the same, however I recently had a problem where Windows 8.1 saw the Windows 10 disk, and decided to modify the boot record […]
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darry wrote on 2021-02-27, 14:00:

My approach to multi-booting is to use one boot drive per OS and to use the BIOS' boot drive selection ability to choose which OS to start .

This has proven very reliable for me and avoids pretty much all potential issues related to MBR/bootloader over-writing or corruption . It also makes re-installation easy .

I do the same, however I recently had a problem where Windows 8.1 saw the Windows 10 disk, and decided to modify the boot record on that disk to boot itself.

Selecting the Windows 10 disk in BIOS just kept booting Windows 8.1, while physically pulling out the W81 disk caused W10 to fail to boot, complaining of a missing device.

I had to use a BCD editor to fix the problem.

This is bad behavior. OSes shouldn't mess with each other like this unless the user tells them to.

Thank you. Good to know that something like that can happen though, TBH, it does not really surprise me . I bet Windows 8.1 encountered a problem, tried to repair itself and ended up fubarring things up . I doubt even using a third party boot manager like PLOP could prevent something like that from happening if Windows really feels like overwriting the boot block . I take bare-metal backups regularly anyway, so an event like that would only be a relatively minor annoyance, even if Windows managed to corrupt itself and its brethren beyond the scope of a BCD editing session .