I am a new Linux user I have just installed Red Hat 9.0.
I have three hard drives on my computer two are ide one is Sata. The Sata drive has XP on it and I am using the cable selected ide master for the Linux drive. My problem is unless I disable the Sata drive in the bios I don't have the option of Linux boot or XP it just automatically goes into windows. With the Sata drive disabled I am given the dual boot screen then I can boot up in linux. Is there a fix or do I have to live with changing the bios settings every time I want run Linux. The mobo I have is an Abit NF7-S v1.0.

ehm, I will try to help a little

Why don't you try to install lilo or grub on the sata too?
It seems that the only partition visible when the sata is active
is only windows,

So, if you put LILO or grub or any boot manager on your sata, it will prompt you to choose which one to boot.
Of course , you need the correct setting on the boot manager to find it out

Alternatively, you should be able to set up the BIOS to boot off the second hard disk - in this case, it looks like that will be the IDE drive.

I changed my bios to look at the ide drive first. Grub comes up and shows me the two options DOS(XP) or Red Hat. When I choose DOS it just hangs on the next screen. I have to check and make sure I picked the right drive but I am sure that I did.

You can try using the Windows bootloader to load:
http://www.linuxsolved.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=125

I had this sort of trouble with lilo recently. You have to tell DOS that it's actually on the first BIOS drive - in lilo this is "map-drive=0x81 to=0x80". Also, if you have DOS compatibility flag or Boot flag on the IDE drive, turn them off with fdisk. Worked for me.

Hi im having the same problem but i am a total noob when it comes to linux. i am trying to learn it but first i am trying to get them to dual boot. I have windows XP on a SATA drive and RH8 on an IDE drive. i cant get dual boot and to get into linux i need to disable the sata. i know this is the prob as above but i need step by step instructions.

Cheers

If you've got RH on the IDE disk, then set that up as the boot drive in your bios and let LILO on that drive boot up the SATA - for this you will almost certainly need to upgrade your kernel.

I'm not helping much, am I?