Multi-boot multiple Windows O/Ses and Linux

[Randy Decker]

With MS support for XP ending 8Apr2014 I am considering upgrading my software 
configuration.  I 
currently multiboot Windows XP and Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (GNU/Linux 
3.2.0-35-generic i686) with GRUB 
1.99-21 ubuntu 3.7 updated automatically by ubuntu's update manager.  At one 
point my hardware 
passed MS's test for windows 7 so I believe that is an option.  

I want to retain XP so I don't need to repurchase all the old software that 
currently works fine 
and because I have hardware that requires the game port interface that MS chose 
not to support in 
newer software.  

I am very happy with Ubuntu and find myself using it by preference when I can.  
I'm not sure 
where I placed my XP install disk after I mis-applied GRUB and overwrote the 
MBR (back when I 
think Ubuntu 9.04 was current). I would like to avoid that problem in the 
future.  Perhaps I 
could dd the 440 or 512 bytes of the MBR for insurance just in case.  

My hardware is a generic PC with an AMD Duron and 2 GB of RAM. XP is on a 
master IDE drive. A 
SATA drive has three primary (MSDOS) partitions containing another XP "drive", 
Ubuntu, and 
linux-swap.  Until recently these 3 partitions resided on the slave IDE 
interface but gparted was 
kind enough to move them all to a bigger newer SATA drive.  The old drive is 
now retired.

I know grub is great at multiple O/Ses but windows is anti-social toward other 
O/Ses.  My 
questions are:
1 Can grub2 handle both XP and 7 in one configuration along with Linux?
2 If so, can it still be compatible with Ubuntu's update manager?
3 How would one approach the reconfiguration?
4 Will 4 partitions be sufficient? 
5 Will GRUB want a partition?
6 What would I need to be careful to avoid?

I would expect to buy 7 to install on the SATA drive.  I'm not sure how to 
install 7 without 
corrupting the MBR for XP.  I didn't put the linux and linux-swap partitions in 
an extended 
partition on the SATA drive as they were on the IDE drive. I hadn't figured out 
yet how to create the extended partition in gparted and I still had a spare.  I 
expect if I needed more than 4 partitions I 
could copy the two linux partitions to a USB drive and back to an extended 
partition.

I have enjoyed reading your advice.  Thanks for any illumination you can 
provide.  I copied the To: line,  I hope I have it right.  I ensured this is 
plain Text.

Randy