Triple Booting Android x86 and Windows 7/8

An easy way to triple boot Windows 7/8, Androidx86 ICS RC1 and Backtrack5 RC2

Ok, I am just going to write this up quickly off the top of my head and then come back and add links and explain in further detail. This Tutorial is so you dont mess up the boot mgr and lock yourself out of windows. The reason this is triple boot is because to install the android easily we need ubuntu installed and if we are installing ubuntu we may as well have some fun and make it backtrack

Download unetbootin, download backtrack RC2 Gnome, download the android x86 image suited for your system.

you can download all the android x86 images and experiment by installing them to usb as a live system to test which is best for you.

Lets assume you have windows 7 or 8 installed already on a single drive system with 1 Primary HDD and 1 NTFS Partition (maybe a 2nd partition for windows recovery, whatever)

Goto control panel Adminstrative tools/Computer Management/Disk Management. Right click on your big NTFS partition (the one containing windows probably) and click shrink volume. shrink the volume by 28gig. This will leave you with a 28gig unallocation section. Close back to desktop.

Insert a memory stick with atleast 4gig in the drive. format it to fat32. load up unetbootin click the circle next to iso image and then browse and locate the backtrack image. click start. once its done click reboot.

make sure you have usb as a boot drive set in bios or click the F1-12 key for your system that brings up the boot select menu so we can load off the usb.

When the backtrack loader comes on screen. choose the default option and load into the live system. you will load to a linux prompt type root for user and toor for password. type cd.. and then type sudo startx. click the install to hdd icon on the desktop.

click next a few times doing what it says. untill you get to the partitions section.

click manual and once the partition list loads select the unallocated space and click add. select logical, filesystem ext4-journal make the size 16gig and set the mount point to / apply.

next select the unallocated space again. choose logical, and set the filesystem to swap. make this 4gig in size.

apply these changes. click next. on the next screen or the next (cant remember off the top of my head look for advanced button) click the advanced button and untick install boot loader. finish the install.

Once installed. reboot the system and remove the stick. You should have a new grub bootloader with several options, 1 being Backtrack and the other being Windows 7/8. Both should work.

Boot into Backtrack if you wish to see that it works. while here you may aswell click internet in the application menu and choose wicd and then either connect via ethernet or setup your wifi connection.

then open a shell and type su, apt-get update and then apt-get install. now reboot and load into windows.

in windows goto Disk Management again and select the unallocated space (should be about 8 gig) and select format fat32.

now insert the memory stick again and format it to fat32. load up unetbootin and this time select your android iso and start. once its finished reboot again with the stick in. remember to load from the stick (i recomend in bios setting your boot order list to have usb first)

select the option install to hdd. you want to choose the 8gig fat32 partition as the install spot, select 2047 when it asks. do not install a bootloader. and allow read/write to system. once the install has finished it will have an option to create a sdcard. do this and set it to 2047. then reboot and remove the stick.

load into Backtrack (root/toor cd .. sudo startx) and open a shell. type su

and then type sudo gedit  /etc/grub.d/40_custom

under the comments ######## add the following:

You will need to change the 6 in (hd0,6) to the sda # of your android partition.

if you cant remember which it is (I should have warned you earlier) simply load a shell and type apt-get install gparted and then type gparted. you can then see which it is in the list that loads (dont change anything here, just exit)

paste the following, remember to change the (hd0,6) to yours.

menuentry Android x86 ICS
set root='(hd0,6)’
kernel /android-4.0-RC1/kernel
initrd /android-4.0-RC1/initrd.img root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=eeepc acpi_sleep=s3_bios,s3_mode quiet vga=788 SRC=/android-4.0-RC1 DATA=
}

menuentry Android x86 ICS DEBUG
set root='(hd0,6)’
kernel /android-4.0-RC1/kernel
initrd /android-4.0-RC1/initrd.img root=/dev/ram0 androidboot.hardware=eeepc acpi_sleep=s3_bios,s3_mode quiet vga=788 DEBUG=1 SRC=/android-4.0-RC1 DATA=
}

ok once you have added those 2 entries save and exit gedit and then type update-grub. now reboot and you should see the 2 new Android OS’s in the boot selection. check em out and see if they load.

You should now have 3 os’s to choose from and all should be working. Please note I have written this off the top of my head after being awake for 24hrs and you may find that I forgot something or mistyped and Backtack and/or android will not be able to be loaded. This is unlikely tho.

The way I have told you to go about things here even if they dont work they will all still be installed there waiting to be resurected. and this way ensures that you will absolutely always have your windows 7/8 OS load!

Just remember to always make sure you have unticked or chosen not to install the bootloaders when asked.

You can check it running on my converted touchpad netbook here on YouTube

Nihilist