I have an 80 gig External Hardrive partitoned twice. I want to Install windows xp on one of the partitons and then be able to boot windows if I want through GRUB. I am not sure how to go about telling GRUB to see the Windows OS when booting GRUB. Any information is appreciated.

I got this from another forum:

First you need to figure out on what partition/drive your Windows install is. If you don't know this already, a realtively easy way to find out is to run, in a terminal, as root fdisk -l. That should print a lot of stuff, you're interested in the line that says "W95", "NTFS", anything relating to Windows, or something that has * on the second column, line thats hould look something like this:

/dev/hda2 * 7 898 7164990 7 HPFS/NTFSThe magic string you're looking for is of the form: (hdX,Y)
X is the number of the drive, counted from 0. So, if you only have one drive, or the one you have Windows installed on is the first, X is 0. If it's the second, it's 1 and so on.
Y is the number of the partition, taken from above (/dev/hda2), minus 1.
So, in our case, the magic string is (hd0,1).

Edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file, either by typing file:///boot/grub/menu.lst in your favourite browser (either Nautius, or Konqueror), which should, theoretically, spawn an editor. Failing that, in a terminal, run vi /boot/grub/menu.lst. Don't worry, I'll also tell you how to work vi. :-)

If in vi, press i to enter insert mode. Then add the following, under a similar entry:


title Windows install
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
bootIf in vi, press Escape, to go into command mode, then type :wq and press enter to save and quit. Then reboot and enjoy.

Bushidozen,
I tried both ways u suggested, neither worked to edit the file. So i used this command in terminal:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

This is what is produced:


#
# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST

### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified
## by the debian update-grub script except for the default optons below

## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs

## ## Start Default Options ##
## default kernel options
## default kernel options for automagic boot options
## If you want special options for specifiv kernels use kopt_x_y_z
## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted.
## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
# kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro

## default grub root device
## e.g. groot=(hd0,0)
# groot=(hd0,0)

## should update-grub create alternative automagic boot options
## e.g. alternative=true
## alternative=false
# alternative=true

## should update-grub lock alternative automagic boot options
## e.g. lockalternative=true
## lockalternative=false
# lockalternative=false

## altoption boot targets option
## multiple altoptions lines are allowed
## e.g. altoptions=(extra menu suffix) extra boot options
## altoptions=(recovery mode) single
# altoptions=(recovery mode) single

## nonaltoption boot targets option
## This option controls options to pass to only the
## primary kernel menu item.
## You can have ONLY one nonaltoptions line
# nonaltoptions=quiet splash

## controls how many kernels should be put into the menu.lst
## only counts the first occurence of a kernel, not the
## alternative kernel options
## e.g. howmany=all
## howmany=7
# howmany=all

## should update-grub create memtest86 boot option
## e.g. memtest86=true
## memtest86=false
# memtest86=true

## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.10-5-386
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.10-5-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.10-5-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386 root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.10-5-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
savedefault
boot

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

Where do I insert the:

title Windows install
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Do I insert it after the mem test? or does it matter?

It does not matter.

Make sure you add "boot" after "chainloader +1" so that it looks like:

chainloader +1
boot