Can I triple boot my PC?

[MikeK]

I just got a used PC with Windows 10 on it.  It has a hard drive large enough for anything I'll ever do.  I know I can dual-boot it with Linux, which I have done on another PC...but I'd like this machine to have Win10, Win7, and Linux.  Is this doable?

[Ed.Kloonk]

Yes, it's doable. Why you need different versions of windows isn't explained.

For ease though, consider running just one OS on bare metal and the rest of them in a virtual machine.

[msuffidy]

Somewhere along the lines you have to install a bootlaoder with a menu, but that is not that hard. I use grub. In a lot of cases the first sector of any partition is passed to the cpu and it loads that partition once you get to that point.

[MikeK]

I do have grub on my other machine.  I wasn't sure of the steps to get three OS's installed, though...if I had to install Win7 first or not.  I only have Win10 on the machine right now and I planned to install Ubuntu next.  I just wasn't sure if I could then install Win7 after that and at what stage to have the three partitions setup.

[Zenith]

You can do it and there are tutorials on the WWW, such as

https://linuxconfig.org/booting-a-ms-windows-os-using-grub

I can't see why it shouldn't apply to a second Windows system.

I used to have Linux/MS dual boot systems on the same HDD years ago and I found it ended as a PITA. Better to have them on different HDDs and choose the boot drive through the BIOS, I found. However, I'm sure things have improved since then and you want to use the same HDD.

Ed.Kloonk's suggestion of having virtual machines is good one, but there are a few things you can't do with a VM.

[SiliconWizard]

Never installed Win 10 so no experience with that, but I do with Win 7.

Install Windows *first*, that's easier, because the Windows install will just replace your bootloader. If you ever have to *reinstall* or even "repair" Windows later on, you will have to manually reinstall Grub (or whatever bootloader you chose.) But at least, install Windows first when installing for the first time, otherwise you'll have to uselessly install your bootloader twice.

In any case, keep a Linux live CD handy. You may need to chroot if anything goes wrong.

[james_s]

You do have to be careful, some OS's don't play well with others. The most foolproof way of doing this is to install a hot swap SATA bay and pop in a different boot drive to change OS's. These days I generally use VMs though in most cases.

[Zenith]

You do have to be careful, some OS's don't play well with others.

In the past I found that when an MS system was installed, it would just overwrite anything else. Maybe things have improved.

[Messtechniker]

You do have to be careful, some OS's don't play well with others. The most foolproof way of doing this is to install a hot swap SATA bay and pop in a different boot drive to change OS's.

I do this all the time. Saves a lot of hassle. I have separate SSDs for
W11, W10, W7, XP, Ubuntu (all equipped with VNC) and Open Media Vault 6.
Chrome OS will be next. As easy as pie.

[djsb]

I would create separate partitions on one hard drive for each operating system (install Windows first and then Linux) or, if using more than one hard drive, install both windows on one hard drive and then Linux on a separate drive. The advantage of installing everything on one drive is that Linux can be used to back up a windows partition (this may also work with separate physical drives as well-I've not tried that). You could use a boot manager like this one

https://sourceforge.net/projects/grub2win/

Or just use Grub when you install Linux. The Linux installer should detect that Windows is installed.

I've only got Mint and Windows 10 on my current PC, so not sure how it would work with 2 windows versions.

[langwadt]

if you are running win10 anyway, WSL run pretty damn nice

[Bicurico]

At one time I had Windows, Linux and Mac OS X installed.
I would switch with Grub.
It worked but generally I disliked it. Also, it was a PITA to get rid of Grub when I decided to just have Windows.
Nowadays I run Linux on a VM or directly inside Windows. I do have a VM for Mac OS X but that never gets used, as I have an iMac and MacBook, too, by now.

[MikeK]

Win10 was already installed.  I just now shrunk the volume and installed Ubuntu.  So I currently have a dual-boot.  Question is...How do I now add Win7?

[msuffidy]

Personally I have wnidows 10 and fedora core 34 partitions. The linux puts on the grub bootloader. What works form me is

edit /etc/sysconifg/grub for options

grub2-mkconfig >/boot/grub2/grub.cfg (will detect the other os and make menu items)

and for example

grub2-install /dev/sda whatever the drive is that you want bootable and is in the bios

Also from time to time I had to
dracut --force to update the initrd which is not relevant to bootloading but has to do with modules needed at startup.  I moded that to set the nvidia add on driver to modeset so you get  a graphical console and startup. And you can specifiy hi res console modes with vga= in the kernel line in sysconfig.

[teisharosingdpj29]

yeah, you can