Hi, i am installing ubuntu for a friend, a linux convert hopefull.... but i am having problems with setting up grub, i installed ununtu on the sda drive, grub was set to install to the default... but when i start the system brub does not load, windows does... there are two drives sda and hdc ... sda has the windows that is being loaded from what i understand... so the sda drive is partitioned into 4 1st = windows 2nd = data 3rd = swap and 4th = ubuntu.... when i have installed ubuntu in the past grub automatically installs and works... so what is wrong or what should i do?

Clarify a few things:

1. When you installed GRUB on sda, did you install it to the volume boot sector or the master boot sector?
2. What’s on hdc?
3. Can you boot your install from a GRUB floppy (or CD if you don’t have a floppy drive)?
4. If so, have you tried installing GRUB from said floopy?

answers
1- i don't know, (i think i want it on the master boot sector), but since i installed grub with the ubuntu installation, i didnt see that option, only the notification that it was going to hd0 i think... whatever ubuntu automatically does. (it has worked for me in the past with other computers)
2-hdc is an old hard drive, used for data, i think it used to have windows on it, it actually had a boot flag which i removed with gparted, (after installing ubuntu i removed the flag with live cd)...
3-i havent tried a grub floppy or cd, dont have one...

hope this will lead everyone on the right track, thanks for the help, as we continue discussing this.

where can i get a grub disk, or how do i make a grub disk to boot from, how do i install grub, and how do i configure it? I have only used the default grub installations on fedora and ubuntu and modified from there... thanks...

This may be useful: http://pixellany.com/boot.html

Setting up GRUB requires that you know how GRUB is seeing the drives---ie as hd0, hd1, etc.

Assuming that you have a live CD, you can do several things:
use dd and hexdump to verify where GRUB was actually placed
eg: dd if=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1|hexdump -C
(This dumps the mbr--if GRUB is there, you'll see the word "GRUB" somewhere around 0x180 or 0x190)

read and modify the /boot/grub/menu.lst (grub config file)

install GRUB to the OTHER MBR, if necessary---or to a floppy

Thanks, for the link, and advice,... still deciding wether to try to put grub onto the Disk or a floppy... but we'll see. thanks.