Okay, so I tried installing FC3 on my IDE hard drive (which currently has two other ntfs partitions (music and page file). My main sata drive has my XP OS partition, and four other partitions for files, programs, etc. I got fc3 up and running, but now I can't boot windows. It just hangs on the boot (screen says rootnoverify (hd0,0)....) The text that is in the grub.conf.

How can I get access to my XP again?

THis is what my fdisk -l said:
Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80054059008 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9732 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 6918 55568803+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 6919 7110 1542240 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda3 7111 9405 18434587+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 9406 9732 2626627+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 9406 9659 2040223+ 82 Linux swap

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5738 46090453+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 5739 12113 51207187+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 12114 16907 38507805 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 * 16908 19457 20482875 7 HPFS/NTFS

I think the problem here may be that sda4 is set as the boot partition on your sata. Is that the partition that contains XP? If not, change it to sda1 or whichever has the boot record for XP. You'll need to edit grub to do this and I'm errr, a bit rusty on that so use the forum search for that puppy.

you sir, are a wonderful man. That did it, i just changed it to the fourth partition (don't know why i didn't notice that, i know my os partition is 20gigs). and it loaded it up just fine. PHHEEWWW!! I've got all my thesis research on NTFS/XP and now I htink i'll back it up before I continue playing with FC3.

<bashful>Dawwww, twern't nuthin'....</bashful>

Put in your XP Installation Disk and go into that command line mode thing (its not called that someone help me out) and then select ur windows installation then when its at C:\WINDOWS or whatever type fixmbr. this should fix the MBR for windows hope i helped u