hi,

i installed Ubuntu just 2 days back, but the GRUB has eaten up Windows XP.
My XP is installed on a logical partition, instead of Primary...

Is it necessary to have the OS on a Primary partition??

also i did'nt make a separate /boot partition..

Hum? don't know about that. Grub sometimes offers you the choice of where to put the bootloader during install, but it really needs to be on the first part of the first hard drive, i.e. so it can see all installed OS's (so yes, from that point, it does normally overwrite the windows MBR but thats usually the only bit that that happens with) - I suspect that if you read the onscreen instruction - I think it was something like hit esc to see the grub menu page. To make it show the menu by default, you have to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and comment out the "hiddenmenu" option (comment out, put a # symbol in front of the line that says hiddenmenu). Then, it should show that it's picked up the windows during the install process.

If you didn't make a separate /boot partition, then it's not a problem "per se". Some distros seem to insist on it (e.g. gentoo), though otherwise, it makes the /boot as a directory in the root file system - which means that it can be a bit of a pain if you want to keep changing distros etc but it shouldn't really be a problem.

When I was still dual booting, I had windows on primary, then /boot and /swap as primary and extended the last primary into / and /home. Probably not the wisest way of having my partitions set up. Now I just have linux so all 4 are on primary (i.e. /boot, /swap, / and /home).

Dunno what other idea's/suggestions/info etc anyone else might have
regards

John