triple booting windows 7, windows 8 and ubuntu

For some reason a random data drive "Clear 2" is marked Active which is risky. Mark it Inactive now: Partition - Mark as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums. Only the partition intended to boot an OS should be marked Active.

With separate hard drives what works best is to install with all other drives unplugged, then boot them independently via the BIOS by setting preferred as first to boot and then triggering the other using the one-time BIOS Boot menu key which every PC has.

Presently Win7 drive is marked System so we know it is booting itself.

What I would do is use the BIOS Boot menu to trigger the Windows 8 drive, see if it will boot on its own. We cannot know this until it is booted since the System flag will not show on it's System Reserved partition until it is booted. If it will boot on its own and has its own System flag then install EasyBCD to add Ubuntu as discussed in Dual boot Ubuntu-Win7.

If Windows 8 will not boot on its own, unplug all other hard drives to run Windows 8 Automatic Repair until it does.

I would then boot back into Win7 and use EasyBCD to delete the other OS's so that it is only bootable via the BIOS. If this is not to your liking, add Win7 using EasyBCD from WIndows 8 with Windows 8 drive set first to boot in BIOS setup.

Are you aware that you're using ugly Win2000 Classic graphics in Win7 which has the most elegant Aero graphics of any OS ever that uses no additional resources to render these? May I suggest that you enable an Aero theme in Control Panel>Personalize, then pick a Backgrounds slideshow. The entire collection of Win7 national edition backgrounds slideshows are 120 of the most lavish scenic pictures ever taken and available for download in my tutorial Clean Reinstall Windows 7.

it didnt boot cause i had the win 8 and ubuntu on the pciex sata card. switched it over and both win 8 and ubuntu is booting. i had to reboot a couple of times to repair windows 8, all i have to do now is reinstall \ uninstall chipset and other drivers. dont want it to run off the p5q pro turbo.

i will try setting windows 8 hdd first. and enabling win 7 and win 8 hdd making it recognize the win 7 in the boot menu(?)

how do i make the ubuntu show up in the boot menu? since its already recognized when i boot with only the win 8 \ ubuntu hdd.

i get the wubi menu, that red orangy boot window.

Keep the 8/Ubuntu Dual Boot on the one hard drive then boot the Win7 drive separately via the BIOS Boot Priority or Boot Menu key at boot.

If this isn't to your liking add Windows 7 using EasyBCD from Win8.

I spelled all of this out above. If you have questions about any specific step then ask back.

after some thought and some fiddling i made it work. thank you heaps mr rocker :)

Great to hear it. Can we see one last screenshot of Disk Mgmt to be sure nothing went awry as it often does?

here goes. alot of active. but those are the drives which have win8 \ win 7 \ ubuntu. i guess thats ok?

everything boots normal, no stutters or anything. spent all night configuring win 8 to new system.. phew.

when i boot i get first the purplish grub loader then when i choose windows 8 i get to choose from all 3.
as shown in the bottom 2 pictures.

and there is pictures of the diskmgmt.

I dont' know why Linux bootloader is involved since you have a full Windows boot Menu for all three OS's. Did you follow the Barman's proven procedure in Dual boot Ubuntu-Win7?

If you are booted into Win7 in the screenshots above as it seems by the presence of "Oppstart" (Startup) on its partition showing it is the booted partition, then it is being booted by Windows 8 System Reserved partition as signified by the System flag on it and none other. Because of this there's no need for any other partition to be marked Active so I would mark everything except Win8 System Reserved Inactive: Partition - Mark as Inactive - Windows 7 Forums

I'm not sure why you recreated the Win7 System Reserved partition because it is not doing anything as proven by it not having the System label when Win7 is booted. You can mark it Inactive and even delete it, unless you want to make that drive independently bootable via the BIOS, in which case you'd unplug all other drives and run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times until it boots on its own and Win7 System Reserved is marked System Active. You can even then add it to a Multi-Boot with EasyBCD so that you have the convenient Windows Boot menu, yet it will still boot itself when it's hard drive is triggered fro the BIOS. Presently it seems it can't boot itself without the System flag, although you can test that by choosing that Hard drive from the BIOS Boot Menu key.

Unfortunately I am a Windows guy so cannot explain why Linux Bootloader starts and then hands things over to the Windows Boot Manager. But I would not want it that way myself, since the method Barman describes above doesn't involve the Linux Bootloader but boots everything via Windows Boot menu.

I'll ask Barman to look at the thread to see if he has anything to add, and also the author of our standalone tutorial to Dual Boot - Windows 7 and Linux Golden can probably help you more than I can here.