Windows XP Recovery Console and Windows XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Triple Boot

Question

No, this is not how a question on how to correctly install each three OS's on one hard drive, although that is what I plan on doing.

Rather, my question is about the Recovery Console found on Windows XP. As many know, you access this after booting up the computer. See here.

You can't access Recovery Console on Windows 7 the same way. Instead, you have to use a System Recovery disc. For certain classes, I need access to Windows XP's Recovery Console. So, I need that screen to appear after I boot up.

If I install all three OS's (triple partition), how can I make it so that I still have access to the Windows XP Recovery Console on that same menu that occurs after booting?

Answer 1

Ok, I already had XP and Windows 7 set up in dual boot with the W7 bootloader, I booted into XP and installed the XP recovery console as shown in your MS link, it installed without error's, I rebooted and when the W7 bootloader showed up, it had the additional recovery console entry, I chose it and it loaded the XP recovery console, it did however give me 2 choices of windows installations to log into, they were identical except for the drive letters.

One thing I did notice was, when I chose to boot into XP from the W7 bootloader, it gave me a choice again to boot into XP or the recovery console, and when I tried to load RC from that menu it failed with a disk read error, but may have something to do with the order I installed the OS's and when I installed RC in XP. I chose D: because I knew it was the XP installation, and the Recovery Console loaded successfully.

EDIT: I managed to get rid of the second RC boot menu, I edited the XP boot.ini file and removed it from there, now when I choose XP from the main W7 boot loader menu, it boots straight into XP, only problem is the RC entry from the main bootloader is now missing. Maybe someone who knows more about dual boot configurations can post a solution, again it may have something to do with my particular dual boot configuration.

EDIT2: I solved the problem of the second RC entry when you select XP from the W7 bootloader menu, is more of a workaround than a fix, boot into XP and go to System Properties > Advanced Tab > Startup and Recovery settings button, set the "time display list of Operating systems" to 0, hit ok,ok, when you reboot you will still have the fully functional W7 boot menu with XP and RC, but now when you select XP, it will boot right into XP without displaying the secondary boot menu showing.

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