Quad booting windows Linux from vhdx

[frankr2994]

Ok this seems nuts but I have my reasons. I would like to quad boot from my laptop so I can run win server 16, win 10, win 7 32bit and ubuntu. So far I got my server installation done minus a couple Bluetooth drivers and created a win 10 vhdx that shows up as a boot option and works. Issue is win 7 32 bit on a uefi setup. That vhdx won't boot. Enable legacy option ROMs makes it show on the boot menu though. Win 7 32 bit is on a mbr vhdx everything else is gpt. So I'm posting here because I think grub 2 can help. From what I've read I can maybe boot win 7 and ubuntu from grub and chainload over to server and 10. This is a really unfamiliar territory for me so I'm looking for advice. I also don't know how to create a bootable Ubuntu vhdx from my server 16. Any and all help will be appreciated.

[Sauron]

I've never tried this but I suppose it's possible. Here is everything you need to know about grub, good luck.

[Dutch_Master]

Install Ubuntu and let it install Grub into the MBR/EUFI partition. During installation it should pick up all Win-OS versions and add them as options in the boot menu. Prior to doing that, just for the "in the event of" scenario, create a bootable rescue disk. My preference is SysrescueCD, yours could differ.

 

HTH!

[frankr2994]

Ok so it's nothing different than just install. That's cool. Any advice on making a bootable Ubuntu vhdx?

[Dutch_Master]

Oowww, now I see: you're installing in a virtual machine? I was under the impression you'd be installing on bare-metal.

 

In any case, you might be in luck: check if Ubuntu has a suitable virtual disk you can use as is, or convert to your particular format. Could possibly in the form of an app-store image or something, not sure (non-Ubuntu user here )

[frankr2994]

No not installing a vm. I have server 2016 installed normal as a uefi got installation. I then created a dynamically allocated vhdx and burned windows 10 into it and made it bootable. Now when I restart the PC I have 2 boot options win server and win 10. I made a win 7 32bit mbr vhdx that also shows up in the boot menu but doesn't boot reason I think I need to get Ubuntu up and going for use of grub 2. What I don't know is windows has an option to send boot files to a vhdx to make them bootable. I do not believe I can use those commands for a Linux install. I've seen a couple videos on doing this and one was making it using a vm that I didn't understand and the other was Russian..... It is pretty cool not to have any added partitions and each os only consumes the amount of space needed on my disk.

[Master Disaster]

You can force Windows 7 to boot in UEFI mode but its not simple. It involves taking all the boot files from the Windows 10 installer and using them to replace the ones on the Windows 7 installer.

[frankr2994]

I still might be interested in that. Setup time on this isn't an issue. Once it is setup I'll make a mirrored drive for a backup

[frankr2994]

6 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

You can force Windows 7 to boot in UEFI mode but its not simple. It involves taking all the boot files from the Windows 10 installer and using them to replace the ones on the Windows 7 installer.

If I did this would I be installing win 7 with gpt then? 

[Master Disaster]

24 minutes ago, frankr2994 said:

If I did this would I be installing win 7 with gpt then? 

Yeah.

[frankr2994]

Ok I've been playing with this and instead of trying to get it to work practically I'm in it for a learning experience now. I guess I should start a new thread but just swapping some boot files didn't work. I'm going to dive into unpacking the win 7 wim file and start replacing things from win 10 x86 in there.