This should be really simple. Of course I found out the hard way after installing twice in 3 days. A lot of folks will tell you to install grub into the MBR of the XP hard drive so you can boot Linux and Windows. Well I tried and tried and tried. No dice! So I remembered what I did a few years ago ( since my last install) was to disconnect my Windows hard drive change the Linux hard drive to be the primary hard drive in the BIOS (not on the Motherboard) and install Linux. Sounds good huh? Well if you leave it this way, during the install Linux will NOT find your windows install. Make a note to install grub into your MBR of your LINUX drive and your current drive mapping is that your Windows hard drive is the primary and the Linux drive is slave.

To clear things up, the Windows hard drive is connected to the Primary IDE cable. The Linux Hard Drive is connected to the Secondary IDE cable.

To me thats great no need for that anyhow. (no Windows) But my wife likes to play games and such and I must admit I need to print every once in a while. printing is another sore subject for me having to do with Lexmark BS printers. But thats another story. So after spending a few grueling hours installing and updating and getting everything nice nice the way I like it, I went in and edited my grub.conf file with the following

title Windows XP
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

This tells grub to pass the ball to the NT boot loader on the other hard drive. So to make this work you need to make sure you have these settings

* Your 2 drives are mapped so that Windows is attached to the primary (IDE cable) and Linux is Slave.
* Your primary boot hard drive in the BIOS is set to Linux Drive.
* You remove the power from the Windows drive prior to booting the Linux CD.
* You install as normal
* Install Grub into the MBR of the Linux Drive (usually /dev/hdb )
* You edit your grub.conf file so that you have the above code allowing you to boot into Windows.

Shut down, plug in the power to the Windows Drive and boot up. you should get your grub boot screen. Hit enter and you'll see the choices you have to boot maybe a few kernels and that Windows hard drive. Go ahead and choose windows no one will blame you for doing so. You should be able to boot it up no problems. So go ahead and reboot and this time choose your Linux kernel that you want and it will boot up as well.

what have I learned here? That Linux can have its own boot loader installed into the MBR of its own hard drive. Windows can boot thinking its the only OS out there. And finally there is NO need to install grub into the MBR of your Windows hard Drive ever again.