Nick: > whats wrong with: > > 1. booting from the cd to install the os on hdb > 2. grub or lilo for booting from then on.
Because then grub or lilo would need to reside on the mbr of the primary master, which XP might not like. My brother and I are wary of messing with the XP disk at all. From past experience, some OEM XP recovery disks don't work at all after the mbr is over-written. YMMV but *my* personal mileage has left me gun shy. By leaving the XP mbr untouched we'll feel safer. And as Lance B said, the boot.ini approach works for some people, and that's the solution we've chosen. If it was my computer, linux would *replace* XP, but my brother's requirements are different. Yuri
