Ubuntu

Hello,

I am having a problem with Dual Booting Windows XP Pro and Linux Mint.

I have Three Hard Drives,
One Hard Drive has Linux Mint Loaded on it. When it is hooked up to the computer by itself it works great. This is an IDE Drive.
The Second Hard Drive has Window XP Pro loaded on it. When it is hooked up to the computer with the third Hard Drive or by itself it works great, or at least as well as Windows works. This is an IDE Drive.
The Third Hard Drive has no operating system on it, I plan on putting files here. This Hard Drive is a SATA drive and I think the computer thinks it is Drive 0 for some reason. I do not know how to check or change that.

I would like to keep the operating systems on separate Drives and use the third Drive to store everything (files, pictures, music, etc.) on. I think I will be able to access the third Drive from both operating systems to get the info and use it on either operating system.

As I said these all work fine by themselves, but as soon as I hook up the Linux Drive with any other Drive, listed above, it locks the computer. From what i am reading, Windows likes to take control and I am sure this is where the problem is. I have read that I need to change something in the GRUB for Linux, is this true? How do I do that? Or maybe there is another way to make these two operating systems not fight each other.

Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You,
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I think your problem is not UNIX or XP, it is really BIOS settings. Usually the BIOS provides a screen to allow you to change boot order for drives and other boottime parameters. Pressing F9 during boot allows you to change BIOS settings.

Go to your BIOS manufacturers website for help.

Are you using grub to dual boot?

Also, where did you put the bootloader for Linux? What settings did you use for grub? If you can, check the /boot/menu.lst file and show us what it says. Is the first stage loader on the windows drive? Are you changing the order of the drives when you change things?

Normally, for easy operation, people will install Linux after windows so that GRUB can manage the booting of both operating systems.

In addition, utilizing the Super Grub Disk might help you understand better what's going (wr)on(g)