Isn't it true that one can only boot from a MASTER Eide device, and not a secondary? I think that is what I learned one. If that's the case, how would I do this:

I want to dual boot linux and WinXP. I am going to have 2 seperate HDDs, one for each, and also a CD rom. The cd rom has to be bootable to install the OS. Is this possible?

You can boot from any device your computer's BIOS allows. I can choose from floppy, LS120, HDD-0, SCSI (or RAID), CD-ROM, HDD-1, HDD-2, HDD-3, ZIP100/250 or LAN.

If you dual boot, then the ability to only boot from master is not an issue. You will load the bootloader program from the master and from there.. only the sky (or the stupidness of an OS) is the limit

Thank you for the quick response!!

Now that I know I can do it, is one boot loader better than another? Should I use lilo or another linux boot loader or the windows boot loader?

While LILO works great for alot of people, some swear by Grup.

I use LILO.

You have to use LILO or GRUB to load Linux, the question is if you want to use something else to load the other OS. If you install Linux, it asks whether to put LILO/GRUB to the MBR or the Linux partition.

I like GRUBs very powerful command line inteface, if you mess up your installation, you can still boot stuff from any location.

I use XOSL as my main boot manager BTW.

ALL YOU NEED is to be able to boot from your Primary Master HDD to have AS MANY operating systems installed as you like.

You can have operating systems installed all over the place, in any hard drive that you want. These partitions don't have to be bootable. The only thing that needs to be bootable at ALL is your active marked primary partition on the primary master HDD (or wherever you have the BIOS set to boot from!)

That is because its here that your boot loader will live. The Windows XP bootloader is pretty much all you will need if you know what you are doing (I can teach you) but commerical products like boot magic can help beginners build a machine that has LOTS of operating systems installed.

The boot loader then starts operating systems from any where on the system you want. Any HDD. It does not matter. All that needs to be bootable is your primary master HDD with a good boot manager written into the master boot record.

There is NO NEED AT ALL to worry about making any more devices bootable other than the primary master HDD, and you can still situate operating systems all over the place.

BELIEVE ME! I have 8 operating systems on my workstation and 3 installed on my server. Both have 5 hard drives!

i believe that only applies if you are multi-booting with win9x/me. you have to install it on the primary drive and/or partition that is designated as "C:\." Pretty much any other OS (i.e. windows xp) can be booted on a secondary drive or partition, such as "D:\" or "E:\" or "F:\" , etc. you get the point.

unless, you are probably using another boot loader or something. in that case, i'll let someone else inform you about that.

I just posted a question in the linux installation thread regarding installing LILO to the MBR if my hda1