XP + Vista

[Alhazred]

On my system I had 2 Windows XP installed, one in Italian and one in Japanese.

Since I installed Vista, I have to pass through 2 boot manager to load XP, the first is the one installed by Vista, which asks me if start with Vista or a Previous System, I select the second one and I have the XP boot manager which asks me if I want to start XP ITA or XP JP.

I need to install Linux too, and then I will have to pass through 3 boot managers, GRUB -> VISTA -> XP to start XP.

I'm looking for a solution to have only one boot manager which asks me which one of my 4 OS to load, listed in one single page.

Have you already managed a situation like this? Do you know how could I do?

I have an idea, but don't know if it work and I can't make a try because I can't risk to lose access to XP ITA (I don't care about the others).

My idea would be to uninstall Vista bootloader using EasyBCD which has this option, add Vista to XP boot manager editing boot.ini(I don't know how to do this), then install Linux which should recognise XP bootmanager and set GRUB to start all the 3 Windows.

Could it be a good idea? How should I edit boot.ini to add Vista?

I have 2 disks, this is the situation:

C: XP ITA

G: VISTA (partition is not really full, but for some reason Partition Magic 8 says it is)

F: XP JP

No letter Ext3: will contain Linux

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Welcome to the Windows Forum.

It is definitely a good idea to only use one boot manager. I see that you have Partition Magic, in which case why not use Boot Magic, which comes with PM.

If you used Boot Magic to install Vista, then it shouldn't have installed the Vista boot manager. But since you've already got it installed, I don't know how to remove it.

[Seshomaru Samma]

You can try with the SuperGrub disc

There is a good chance it will recognise all three OS

and it's free

[Alhazred]

PowerQuest Partition Magic 8.0 (not Norton Partition Magic 8), in the "Install another operating system" tool, doesn't support Vista, the latest operating system supported is XP, so, I suppose that I can't use it to install Vista from there.

Do you know any other software which has the same feature and supports Vista?

I've installed Linux, as I thought I have to go through 3 boot manager to start XP ITA.

I've downloaded and burned SuperGrub Disc iso, but I don't know the correct steps to make Grub recognise my 3 Windows and start them without Vista loader.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I think (although I have never tried it) that you can install Vista on Boot Magic; just tell it it's XP. You can later name the menu item whatever you like.