mbr
 

i've got 2 hard drives, one windows, and one that i'm gana put linux on as soon as i can get more cds(which may be in a few weeks). i wanted to dual boot from the windows hdd, but when i tried installing grub, i didn't do something right and i can't figure out what. now in order to boot i have to use a grub 0.97 floppy, and type:

root (hd1,0)
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1
boot

it gets anoying. but i can't get grub installed on here, and i can't fix my mbr. is there some program that i can run and it will install grub on here by itself? or at least something that'll install grub on here fully? right now i'm getting error 22 after it says stage 1.5.

If I read your post correctly, you have windows on the slave drive (hdb), and nothing on the master drive (yet). You have grub on floppy.

This is what tells me windows is on the slave drive:
The grub erro 22 is what tell me you have nothing installed on the master drive:
The only way to get grub to boot is from the floppy, because grubs files are normally part of the Linux installation, specifically in the /boot directory.

Switch the jumpers on the drives, and make the windows drive master, and the other drive slave. It's possible you have not changed the MBR of that drive, and windows should boot.

When you do install Linux, no need to change the jumpers again. Just install to the empty drive, and write grub to the MBR of the master drive to setup dual boot.

grub is on both drives, but it gives me error 17 on the master drive. I'm assuming it's something to do with my incomplete linux install. I boot from the slave drive just by setting it in the bios.

options i've got to boot from is:

master: linux(incomplete install), with grub(error 17)
slave: windows, with grub(error 22)
floppy: pain in the neck, but i can boot anything from it.