Boot.ini - a lil help please

[[AK]Clay]

In order to get VPN working, I had to install WinXP on my laptop.
No problem. I have a third partition I'm not using, so I tossed WinXP Ultimate therein. Thing is, after the install, it hosed my boot.ini file, and no longer sees my Windows Vista to boot as an option! It does see that drive at least, but just can't boot into it.

Even more concerning, it no longer even sees my Linux (Ubuntu) partion. Any tips on what text I need to have in boot.ini (or elsewhere if I'm lost) so that I can triple boot? Also, I'd like to make Ubuntu my default boot option.

[[AK]Abaddon]

I am pretty sure you need to install XP before Vista in order to have both on the same machine.

I am not sure there is a way to get your Vista running again. You might try reinstalling the Linux partition and see if it sets up the bootloader correctly for XP and Vista again.

[[AK]Mydrial]

Ever see the guy at the circus juggle 3 knives?.....well you just caught one in the chest unfortunately. My experience has alway been to install stupidest(oldest) to smartest OS ...seems like I always had the best experience doing it in that order. Sorry I cant be more helpful than that.

[[AK]StitchJones]

Because of Windows and the Boot Sector configuration. Windows MUST be your first install on your machine. Beyond that with your Linux configurations you can allow the GRUB bootloader to manage your other Linux configurations as needed.
Remember when dealing with this type of setup if something goes south on you remember to have a windows type bootdisk ready so you can run the fdisk /mbr to replace your main windows style boot configuration. Once that is performed, you'll need to re-do the GRUB setup or simply make a boot floppy/cd to envoke your Linux boot up as needed.

Helpful Links:
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/arc...php/t-950.html
http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ins...ulti-disk.html

[[AK]Clay]

Ok, thanks for the links. I'll be sure to check them out. I saw in some that there's a way to fix my situation (/wout having to reinstall everything), but it's unfortunately not as easy as adding a couple lines to the boot.ini file.

[[AK]Nuts]

I used VistaBootPro to solve most of my problems; or like stitch said the fixmbr from the XP disk did the trick as well.