I have a 4gb hdd that i want to use for slack ware 10 but i still want windows xp to be my master harddrive. my friend says if you have windows as a master hdd and linuxs as a slave hdd windows will format the slave hdd, is he lieing?

I also would like to know if there is a way i can instal linux without using cds. i mean when im in windows if there is a way to install linux without having to restart. ( Im not sure if that made sence)

2) no, you can't install linux from windows...

1) i've posted on this a lot...
you'll need to have slack manage your boot process (lilo, actually), and i like to recommend people to put a /boot partition of type ext2 in front of your windows partition on HD0 -- your master. this partition will be about 100Mb. then put the rest of your slack partitions on the other drive. the /boot will be the active (bootable) partition, and *via lilo* will give the option to boot to windows or slack...

[edit]and just for clarification: your friend sounds crazy[/edit]

For the first question, no that is not true. If you want reassurance, remember you need not even have the slave HDD connected while installing windows on the master. Whether master of slave however, remember that you will need to be able to choose to boot into either MS or linux. That means generally means installing lilo or grub on the MBR of the Master HDD. Or you can also use a boot floppy. (there is lots of info you can research on dual-boot in these forums and elsewhere)

I cannot think of any "true" linux install that is possible from with MSwin. Consider Cygwin or TopologiLinux for this purpose. They allow linux to be run from within Windows without any repartioning (but there of course are comprimises in this setup).
Have fun !

for clarification... cygwin is a glorified bash prompt... i've hacked some stuff into it like a partial gnome install so i could run anjuta (anjuta.sourceforge.net) from windows, but it was critically slow... cygwin is still a worthwhile project, though...

-- cygwin.com