Ok, I have Win XP pro loaded on my IDE0 drive(C) 40GB. I purchased a 30GB Drive and made it Primary Slave drive. I want to load Linux on it and dualboot. I don't care if I use the WinXP dualboot or LILO. My 1st big issue is I can not seem to install on /dev/hdb.... I can fdisk it from the bootcd, but I can not partition it?!? It only lets me choose /dev/hda to partition. How do I install Linux on the second drive and then make my system dualboot?

First of, there is no such thing as a primary slave!!! What kind of filesystem is your second harddrive: FAT32, NTFS, or even EXT2??? If it is NTFS, then you need to reformat it to FAT32 so Linux can "see" it... Lawrence

Geez, excuse me for typing wrong name. I figured out my first user error with not finding the 2nd drive. My question is it is asking to alter my MBR... will my XP be ok after it? My primary Drive running XP is NTFS The secondary drive I used linux fdisk to partition it. It now comes up in the druid and I can partition it just fine. But I am concerned about overwriting my MBR.

I dual boot from the MBR with no apparent problems. If you decide to remove the linux system, you can do a fdisk/mbr. Primary Master, Primary Slave, Secondary Master and Secondary Slave are valid terms as far as I know.

Im a little confused here I have a primary IDE with a master and slave and a secondary IDE with a master and slave . I am using non exsistent primary slave ????????