Triple booting OS X, XP, and Vista

[emperoruriel]

I was just wondering if someone was sucessful in creating a triple boot of OS X, XP, and Vista without using outside programs like rEFIt or bootpicker. I tried all weekend with no avial. All the times I installed, when booting, XP or Vista said they were corrupt or missing a file, and that I needed to reinstall. I would like to install XP and Vista for some high performance computing. Most of the articles I have found are 2 years old and wonder if there is a better (easier) way. Please give me some insight and direction.

Thank you.

 

[emperoruriel]

Anyone at all.

It would help me greatly if someone could help.

I hope someone may be able to reply, other than myself.

 

[Littleodie914]

Anyone at all.

It would help me greatly if someone could help.

I hope someone may be able to reply, other than myself.

I'm actually planning on turning my Leopard / XP machine into a Leopard / Ubuntu / XP today.

I *think* that you can just re-partition the XP drive, then install Ubuntu in there. So to get to any of the OS's:

Boot Camp -> Mac Side -> Mac OS X
Boot Camp -> Windows Side -> XP
Boot Camp -> Windows Side -> Ubuntu

I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Siron]

I have OSX, XP Pro 32 and Vista Business 64 residing on three internal drives. At boot with the Option key held down I get three drives to choose from OSX, Windows and Windows (the first is XP and the second is Vista). I am considering rEFIT because it would be nice to have a more obvious visual presentation (and you don't have to hold the Option key down).
I think your problem is a corrupted installation. There are people on this forum who have reported a problem with "missing hal.dll files". If you do a search you will see that the only way around is to go back to OSX reformat the drive and partition for Vista and XP (if they are both on the same drive). I had problems installing Vista on a second drive and the workaround is to remove the OSX drive and then install Vista. If you are going to install XP and Vista on the OSX drive then create the two partitions (I think you will end up with disk0s1 as OSX disk0s2 as Vista and disk0s3 as XP). Install Vista first then XP.
One more question. Why are you installing XP and Vista. I ran XP for a while because of all the posts about "Vista sucks" etc. I recently installed Vista Business 64 (to take advantage of the 8 cores and 4GB RAM) and I am well pleased. It's quick and games run great. I've had no problems finding drivers) it recognized my internet connection immediately and also had no problem using my network LaserJet.
If you have a Mac Pro I would strongly recommend Vista Business 64.
Alan