well, this morning, i tried all suggestions and finally ended up reinstalling linux totally (still installing now). i have a fresh slate - still booting with linux on primary. there is a theory that our SATA controllers are cheap and can't support dual boot...

oh man... booted linux, now grub won't even boot linux. it gives me error 17... cannot mount selected partition. please help quick, i have to leave soon...

never mind, changed linux grub configuration to (hd0,0)... i installed it with linux as secondary drive, then changed bios so linux was primary.
linux is booting again... now that pesky windows. i'll check out the fdisk

[root@ucmerced008-146 ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9728 78140128+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 14 9729 78043770 8e Linux LVM

there's my "fdisk -l"

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd1,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp.img
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd1) (hd0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

and grub.conf

syg00..

Thanks for the correction. I did not realize that XP was being booted from a slave. I have my setup as two SATA masters, primary and secondary and have never used the mapping directives. I boot from SATA 1 (sda1, known to grub as (hd0,1)), and it boots Windows fine.

Thanks again,

Bob