Advice for triple-booting M1330?

I'm in eager anticipation of getting my M1330 (ordered on 6/26, finally in boxing!) and will be looking to configure it for a triple boot of Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Ultimate, and Ubuntu Linux. I've seen some guides on how to do this, but nothing that takes into account Dell's Media Direct partition and Dell's diagnostic partition.

Ideally, I'd like to get one boot loader to include all 3 OS's (as opposed to Linux / Windows where Windows goes to XP / Vista choice). Also, is it possible to set up a shared data partition where I can store files and data that would be accessible by any of the OS's?

I'm assuming I'd need the following partitions:
- Diagnostic partition
- Media Direct
- XP
- Vista
- Ubuntu
- Ubuntu swap
- Shared Data

Also, from what I've seen, the order for the OS installs should be XP, Vista, then Ubuntu.

Should I just delete all the partitions except for the diagnostic one and then reinstall everything? At what point do I try reinstalling the Media Direct partition?

Has anyone else done this or thinking of doing this? Any suggestion / advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

bump, bump, bump...

 

gmui,

I don't know how closely this matches your requirements but there is a similar thread - e.g. see the post http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2268094&postcount=27

 

Hi Nalada,

Thanks for the thread suggestion. I did read through that and though it seems to be a similar idea, it's not exactly what I was looking for. I still wanted the Media Direct to work as is with the MD button, and just have either the Vista boot loader or GRUB present the OS choices.

It doesn't seem like there is too much interest in this config though, so I'll just have to search for more guides and suggestions off the forum. If I eventually get somewhere with it, I'll try to post back some kind of guide for what I end up with. Luckily though, I'm using a new drive so I can always do a little trial and error w/o worry of hosing the machine irrevocably.

Thanks again,
Gary

 

I don't want to do a triple boot but I would like to do a dual with Ubuntu and Vista. I would also like to keep the Media Direct capability.

Just a question, why do you want to dual boot with XP also? The Vista OS is similar enough and the compatibility issues are being smoothed out.

 

I was reading this Ubuntu hack book and it shows how to use an external hard drive as the partition for Ubuntu. Best of all, you install the GRUB on the external drive, so it will not affect your notebook's partitions and setups.

 

I'm using it for software development and need to ensure compatibility for both XP and Vista. For Ubuntu, I'm trying out VMWare's player with Ubuntu Ultimate and so far it seems ok to use until there is a good How-To with Ubuntu on the M1330.