Triple Booting Ubuntu, Windows XP and 7

[SSK]

Hello all,

I have recently installed Windows 7 on my dekstop and would now like to install it on my laptop.

However, i currently dual boot with XP & Ubuntu using GRUB.

How can i get Windows 7 on without everything getting messed up?

I would still like my individual partitions for XP and Ubuntu to remain in tact.

N.B. Before i had Ubuntu installed, i tried Vista but decided to uninstall it. In GRUB it said Vista Loader in the menu and i have not managed to sort this out. Should i repair XP and get the orginial boot files or could this help with installing Win7?

Any help appreciated

[nightkhaos]

What do you need XP for?

[peterb]

The easy(ish) way would be to install windows 7 and then re-install Ubuntu, and let the instalation routine sort out the bootloader.

Otherwise enter the following search string into Google

GRUB bootloader windows 7

and start working your way down the list! (To many for me to link through, and too late for me to read and repeat here! )

It would be possible to save the GRUB boot sector, install win 7 and then reinstall the Grub boot sector, then hand craft the Grub conf file - but unless yiu really know waht you are doing, you stand a good chance of borking the whole lot. (However there are people on here with much better Linux knowledge than me who may be able to help you.)

If you want to try that route (or even just for interest) you would need to start here:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html

[aidanjt]

No need to save the boot sector.. After installing Win7, fire up the ubuntu live cd, run `grub` as root, use the grub commands:

root (hd0,x)
setup (hd0)

Where 'x' is partition number minus 1. Edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, make a copy of the boot entry for XP, and edit it for 7 (different label and partition).