Hi I have 2 40 gig hard drives, one is obviously my main boot drive and the other is a slave with data on it. If I make the other bootable by installing Windows onto it, can I choose which one I boot from somehow at startup without obviously changing cables and jumpers around? Cheers.

Yes, the XP install program will set up a boot menu. If you are thinking of installing Win98 on the second drive, that will take a little more work.

What you want is called a Dual-Boot setup. First, back up all your data off your Slave drive. Now reboot,and your computer will boot to the Master as it always does. Now, while XP is running and you see the desktop, insert your XP disk and it will auto-boot into the setup screen. Start a fresh (new) install, NOT a repair. You will eventually get to the format screen. Now wipe your slave drive clean. Be very careful to point to the slave and not accidentally point to your Master. You can just remove the partition(s) on it, reset a new partition and format it. After the formatting is finished, XP installation will automatically begin, and install XP as normal. Now when you reboot, you will be given a choice of booting into XP#1 or XP#2. By the way, I set up clients' computers this way with a dual-boot double XP. That way, if a virus/system corruption makes acces to the main drive impossible,they can boot into the "backdoor", open up the main drive and drag and drop their data off the drive. Several have thanked me for this. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime; Then industry pollutes the water and kills all the fish.