K, my working dual boot (Mandriva/XP MCE) collapsed but I'm going to try again with mandriva club's official dvd, which I'm currently downloading (I was given a free month, but it'll still take another day to finish). I was ready to try a 4th distro...Unfortunately, many of the howtos that exist to use this method are written for other distros, and when I try them they give me different results than what's reported in the docs. I can't even use dsargeant's solution because the mbrwhiz tool he discusses won't work with my logical partitions.

All I really need (I hope) is the code to use the rescue-gui's console to find and copy grub onto a floppy.

I'm sure I can do the rest by now, as I've tried sooo many methods, and editing the boot.ini would be a piece of cake for this exp. win user/builder.

I've put a similar post in the forum at mandriva club, but haven't gotten a reply after quite some time, so I thought I'd give my fav forum site a try. I've had some great support here already at linuxquestions, so I did my searches here and am still coming up short.

Thanks in advance and for the past support! :-)

read my tut if you want to keep the MS bootloader and chainload to grub.....no need to have a floppy which is SLOWWWW.

(2) but I have also done a tut on howto make a grub floppy for large kernels but altho it may be beyond you at this stage.....grub on cdr is quicker and no space problems for the newer kernels.

eg I have a vanilla kernel as we speak with no initrd image and its 2.4Megs

ur right i'm afraid: it is beyond me at this stage. I was reading in the official documentation that u can, with that version, install grub only onto a floppy at the bootloader install stage. But I haven't even been able to get to that stage yet. I'm almost nowhere.

But when I tried to install it from my newly-burned dvd I ran into even more problems: massive mbr/parition table errors, I thought i'd gotten rid of the grub but it reappeared, fixed those; then couldn't repair win; backups aren't much help when the mbr has been changed..., decided to delete everything & start from scratch... then it turns out the mdchecksum was missing from the dvd <argh!!!> tried copying the iso from the dvd and repairing it through azureus, and azureus is telling me my iso is 4KB too big. <double argh>

i'm obsessive-compulsive when it comes to fixing pc problems, but it's been 2 weeks since I started this install linux project and even I am ready to give up...

why don't you re-install MS....but download a live cd such as kanotix or mepis or knoppix and use that for awhile so you do not have a steep learning curve.

In case you do not know there are heaps of live cds that do not install but run in ram.....check out www.distrowatch.org if interested

The very first thing I did was buy the 2006 ed of the Linux Bible, and it had a couple of cd's to give you a feel for most of the major distros, incl. the livecd of knoppix. Then I actually tried installing ubuntu's dapper drake, but that didn't work for me. 1st distro I actually got installed was the freecd version of Mandriva (using grub the standard way), and it fell apart the next day. Since then I've gotten very stubborn about getting Mandriva-Linux-PowerPack-2006-DVD.x86_64, but it's almost impossible to download and get a non-corrupted iso. Not even their ftp sites have worked for me yet -- or my system builder...

My builder is coming on Sunday with his family (to pick-their-own-vegies from my garden; I'm drowning in it all, and would rather not see it rot on the vine, so I invite almost everyone I know), another HDD (I'm buying a 2nd tuner specifically for linux) and some discs to do an install. He's recommending knoppmyth, but I just discovered it doesn't have a 64-bit version, which is important to me. I know myth doesn't require 64-bit, but it's silly to have all this incredible hardware and no "working" 64-bit OS (I originally bought xp-64 with the htpc he built, but no 64-bit driver for my LG dvd drive exists yet, and without it there's no way I can get it to go into dma mode). I mean, tv is not all I do with it: I just authored my first original dvd training video. Perhaps I'll ask my builder to try dapper again for me, as he's got ubuntu working on his laptop, although he doesn't pretend to be as up-to-speed on Linux as he'd like, and he's tried myth before, too.

That's my abbreviated (if you can believe it) saga that covers the last 2 weeks, lol...

well good luck to you....but I have a 64 bit processor but use a 32 bit Mandriva software because I still believe there is not complete software out there to only run 64 bit.

thats my aussie 1.5 cents worth

That is the easiest way to do the multiboot, so your perseverance
will be rewarded.

Install grub on the MBR of the 2d HD
Make the bios boot from the 2d HD
Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to add an entry with
chainloader +1
(multiple example around to look at for the syntax) to boot Zindows

make a 5 or 6 Gb partition for Mandriva, that will be enough
You can make more spare partitions for other distros you may try
better now than later.
Set /home on a different partition
(I suggest you have a 32 and 64 bits versions installed so you can see
the difference, and maybe have an easier learning curve with the 32 bits)

You will also find you can chainload from the MBR of 2d HD
to any partitions of the 2d HD. This means that you can install
bootloaders of future distro into their own partition instead
of the MBR.

Can believe it!
It is a learning curve. WE all went through it.
As an example, I have been trying to install freebsd along mandy, found out
bsd wants a primary partition only, added partition, trashed
the order of the partitions, so /etc/fstab and grub are now silly.
I know how to recover this, but only because I messed with things
like that before.
You gain experience by doing these trials now.

As a learning point, Zindows-cds have an option fixmbr (with fdisk?)
and mandy dvd/cd have a rescue mode to reinstall the bootloaded if needed
Try to use grub rather than lilo: if something goes wrong
grub is more flexible