anyone know how to set it up so when you start your pc you have the option to boot into linux or windows? I read some stuff on it talking about creating a small partition and doing such and such with it, but it was assuming you use one hard drive I guess. Any of you guys know? I ran linux back in the day by its self for a little while, but this was my first attempt at running them together. I thought because they are on separate drives I could just say f11 at post and pull up my boot menu and specify which hard drive to boot from... but no linux is saying screw you windows is not allowed to boot :p. So how do you guys do this?

Using LILO, you can install LILO in the mbr, and tell it to give an option to load Windows from the boot sector on whatever drive you installed Windows on.

You can also use Windows' (NT or higher) boot loader, by installing LILO's boot loader into a file and listing that file as a boot option in boot.ini.

What OS is booting ?

Linux is probably. The distro would kind of help. Did you use grub or lilo?

I don't think the distro matters.

Linux is booting. Okay, well how do I get Lilo? Do I need to put it on a bootable cd and do that partition junk? Or how do I do the windows boot.ini one?

Most every distro comes with a bootmanager included.

[quote author=hismajesty[yL] link=board=2;threadid=8725;start=0#msg80702 date=1095519492]
Most every distro comes with a bootmanager included.
[/quote] Do you know where I might find it? I poked around around and could not find anything.

In every distro I've ever installed (though, I've only installed three - Redhat, Slackware, Yoper) it has it in the setup part.

That's why I asked what distro. It does matter if you are trying to figure out where everything is and how to do certain stuff. If you have SuSE go to the lizard head in the lower left corner. Go to System>Yast>System>boot loader manager.
I'm just thinking i saw you say you had suse somewhere on the forum. Or look for this file /boot/grub/grub.conf and add:
[code]Title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1[/code]
hd0,0=the first partition on your first harddrive.
I also asked what distro because if he's new to linux he may not know what lilo or grub are and by knowing the distro it would help someone with knowledge figure out which one he's working with. I think when trying to help someone with linux saying that knpwing the distro doesn't matter is like saying it doesn't matter if someone tells you whether they are using xp or 98.

I am somewhat new to linux, I mean I have run it in the past, but not side by side with windows. This part is new to me. Well Ill try that and post again.

Ok, I get this error when I click on windows, "unrecognized device string" or something like that, its error number 11. I cant very well copy and paste it, but I could take another look at it. Here is what is in my grub config file
[code]
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sat Sep 18 12:02:17 2004


color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title Linux
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdc2 vga=0x317 splash=silent desktop resume=/dev/hdc1 showopts
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: Windows###
title Windows
root noverify (hd2,0)
chainloader +1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdc2 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off vga=normal noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 3
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: Memory Test###
title Memory Test
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/memtest.bin
[/code]

Okay, windows is on the last of my three hard drives. The first two are on my second ide cable, ide1. The first of which is the one linux is on, the second is a storage drive. Now the third drive is ide2, and its not really ide, its sata, but its the one windows is on. So I don't know how this should be. I tried (hd0,2) and all, I think it might be (hd0,3), but I dunno. Any ideas?

Is your windows partition larger than 8gbs?
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/05/fhassel_windows_not_booting91.html

tis' 200 gig.

So I just download this driver update and screw around with it? I am going to reread this article real fast.

Ok it says that the hard drive values should not be set to auto in bios. Mine are, what the heck should I set them to?

Blah.I'm sorry hd0,0=first harddrive, first partition
It should be hd3,0
Try changing that in your grub config first. Sorry about the brainfart.

It still doesn't like me. I tried burning that iso to a cd, but it is not booting, like when my pc looks for a bootable cd (because the cdrom drive is first in the boot order) it does not find one. I burned the iso. Ugh.... What if I dropped linux for a while, then modded the windows boot.ini or something so it would boot go to the third hard drive and then I select linux, rather then going to the first hard drive and me selecting windows in the third. Is that possible even?

Ok, if linux is on the hd, the hd is no longer ntfs, so windows would not assign it a letter. This drive linux is on was c to windows, and the drive windows was on was e. If c no longer exists, the drive that was formerly d would become c, and the drive that was e would become d. I am getting a disk read error now, number 25. Does this sound like the cause? I want windows on the sata drive, because its the fasted, unfortunately, I cannot make this drive c without taking out the other two drives. I also did not want to partition up the e drive. But I may need to. You know, just install suse on the e drive and see what that does. But does my windows drive jump up a letter theory sound logical? I just installed windows the other day, and I just installed suse, so I can reinstall both at the drop of a hat. But all of this reinstalling of everything takes up a lot of time -- huge pain in the arse. Here is my current code for grub
[code]
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: Windows###
title Windows
root (hd2,1)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
chainloader +1
[/code]

I've never used whatever it is you're messing around with in all those posts, but have you considered running lilo ? Does SuSE not like lilo or something ?

suse came with grub.

Okay, I was right, the windows being on the last drive was what was doing it. I cut up my little drive into 3 partitions (only bad thing is it is ide, and I wanted windows on the fastest drive... oh well), one for windows, one for linux, one for swap. The I installed xp home (I plan to upgrade it to pro tomorrow, but I cant just install pro because my pro cd is scratched, I have to upgrade to it (but it saves me from having to type the cd key)), then linux, now it all runs smooth. The windows partition is under 8gb, so is the linux. But I have tons of space on my other two hard drives. I can put in another linux partition later, and I have tons (240gb) of ntfs space available right now. Now I am happy. Thanks for the help guys.... You guys helped me understand this a bit more. If I could game from linux and run asp.net effectively I would use this full time... I love this freaken spell checking on forms.