Hi,
Got xp loaded on a 250 Gig sata drive with a dvd burner as master on each ide channel. Installed a 10 Gig drive to secondary slave and tried to install Fedora 5 first. It asked me if I wanted to install grub to the SATA drive. As installing it to the MBR wasn't mentioned and i'm new to linux I thought I wouldn't install to the SATA drive to ensure not damaging my XP system. After the install on restart the PC went straight to XP as normal. Suspect now this was my fault for not installing grub to SATA and possibly partly poor wording on Fedora's part by not saying it would get installed on the MBR of SATA. Then tried to install Kubunto 6.06.1 from the live cd. Didn't get any option of installing grub to a MBR on the SATA drive. Same problem now that XP still loads straight up and can't get to Kubunto. Is there a floppy image I can download from somewhere so that if I boot my PC from that floppy it will then go straight to my Kubunto installation and load it. Been looking on the internet and think I may need a grub boot floppy but can't get to my Kubunto to create the disc and found so much info on it i'm more confused now than I ever was.
Thanks for any possible help
Alan

You aren't the only one confused...

What I had done when I installed Kubuntu was had it take over the drive then used GParted to edit the ext3 partition then installed WinXP in the empty space. If this is not anywhere close to what your problem is, let me know.

Hi,
I'm not going to touch my windows installation as there is too much stuff on it. I installed an additional IDE drive for the Kubunto install which I cannot get to, to boot. Don't think I need gparted as I partitioned the IDE drive during install as 100 Meg for /boot, 2 Gig swap, remaining 7 gig as /. All seemed to install ok and I think it may be just missing a boot loader somewhere which I was hoping to be able to get a floppy to boot Kubunto for me.
Thanks for your help

Firstly, if there is anything vital on your windows partition - Please back it up NOW! There are too many sad posts about "I lost all my important personal files because I chose the wrong thing".

Your problems seem to be because grub is not installing. The last time I installed kubuntu (on four different PCs), it just went ahead and installed itself on the MBR of the first disk (for my PCs this was /dev/hda). I was slightly annoyed at the time as I was used to distros that asked me what to do, but in the event, it didn't matter: I was able to tell grub about my other linux distros, and win98 (what's that? .. I forget now).

But your setup is different: You say you have "a dvd burner as master on each ide channel". I have no idea why you might have chosen to do this, but I think it might be relevant: The install program may be trying to write to the MBR of your DVD, and this won't work.

Then you have SATA drives (which I do not), so I am not sure exactly what is going on here, but try putting your IDE disk (just for kubuntu) as Master on the first IDE channel. Put your DVD as slave, it'll still work fine, trust me. Make sure the master/slave jumpers are set correctly. Double-check everything.

Then reinstall kubuntu, being very careful about which disk you choose to let it install to (You did make that backup, didn't you?). If you want to be doubly-safe, you could unplug your windows disk before you install kubuntu, but if you do do this, be aware that it will not be detected by kubuntu, and will not be automatically added to the boot options for grub. But you can fix that later. Fixing boot options is straightforward with linux, and difficult (impossible?) with windows because windows thinks it is the only OS. Linux is far more tolerant and adaptable.

Once the install is finished, you should re-boot to kubuntu. You may, or may not, see your windows installation as a choice at the grub boot screen. Do not panic if you don't see it - grub may need a little tweaking: You can always come back here, and someone will help you with the next stage.

If you can't get on the net to ask questions, then plug your windows disk back in and you should be back where you started (post #3).

Hope this all makes sense to you.

BTW you'll find your kubuntu installation will go more smoothly if you have everything connected, turned on and plugged in before you start: Printer, mouse, keyboard, scanner, monitor, camera, and please god, you'll have the internet coming in through an ethernet cable from your modem/router and not some USB piece of s**t!

Good luck, keep persevering, and welcome to LQ!

Thanks tredegar and kalabanta for your advise and help. I have some spare time the weekend so will try what you suggested and get back with the results asap.
Thanks
Alan Edwards