At this moment in time I'm using Mandriva Powerpack 2006 and Windows 2000 Pro and I wish to install SuSE 10.1 onto the same hard drive. Is this possible, if so how do I go about it.

Well, time ago I've tried to do something similar with an old Mandrake version, win2k and SuSe 7... It worked quite well! Simply, during the installation of SuSE, the system detected Mandrake and asked me if I wanted to replace it or install in another partition. I think that SuSE 10.1 should have the same option.

1. install
2. add to bootloader

Cheers, will do as you said. Thank you.

Who is in charge of the MBR? Thats where you want to install the Boot loader.

What do you mean==="who is in charge"?

Whoever has access to the physical hardware can run an install CD---erase all the drives, install new SW, and put code in the MBR.

I meant, which OS has control of the MBR.,mandriva or windows. That would be where he wants to install suse's boot loader for a triple boot.

The bootloader--or something---goes in the MBR. It does not matter what OS you are using!!

If the system is dual-boot already, it is likely that it is using the bootloader installed when Linux was installed. In this scenario, you can skip the bootloader when installing SUSE. Then you simply edit the config file for the existing bootloader.

You can also allow SUSE to put in the bootloader. If you are lucky, it will detect all the existing OSes and set up the config file correctly.

With a typical single-drive setup, the bootloader always goes in the same place--ie sector 0---aka the MBR. What is different is that the bootloader needs to know where to find its config file. In GRUB, that info is hard-coded into GRUB stage1 (the code that goes in the MBR).
With Windows, I have a hunch that the bootloader only knows how to look for the config file in one place.

When I (finally) worked out how to get my system to triple boot Mandriva, FC5 and winXP, it took me a while, but I enjoyed the challenge.
It involved quite a bit of starting over, and doing it again, but here are some quick pointers that may help you out:
1) I read somewhere that you NEED to use GRUB as your boot loader. Apparently, LiLo has "issues" with more than 1 or 2 OS's. If you like LiLo, sorry, but its time to make the change.
2) Notepad and pen (in a physical sense) WILL be your best friend! I found that with all my restarting and so forth I was losing track of what was what and what went where. I simply took a notepad and pen and wrote out the complete grub.conf file for FC5 and Mandriva, compared and meshed them together so that the grub version I eventually installed (mandriva-style) had all the ins and outs for all three of my operating systems. This you will mainly need to do for the *other* linux distro you install, as the bootloaders seem to pick up windows quite easily.
If you want, contact me, and I will be more than happy to try and recollect exactly how I did it. (please, though, it was a while ago, be patient!!)

I'd disagree with the suggestion that you *have* to use GRUB. I've always used lilo, and have not encountered any issues even when I (very briefly) was fooling around with a quad boot.

OTOH I definitely agree that taking notes along the way can really be helpful, and could end up saving a lot of time.

Setting up a multi-boot system is a common question (dual boot is by far the most common, but other people have set up a tri-boot or even quad boot system or more) and there are numerous existing threads that cover the topic. Good luck with it either way

I probably didnt specify this clearly.
What I should have said was:

As I said, it was a while ago. Thanks for pointing that out for me, J.W. At the same time, you are right, notes REALLY DO help you! (From memory, it took me three weeks in total to sort it all out. It tookm me two weeks to work out that I needed notepad and pen! I am such a noob!