I've just installed Mandrake 9 on a partition on a slave hard disk. I have Windows xp on the master disk. I want to boot into windows xp by default so that the other users of the pc don't have to choose this from the boot loader.

How do I get rid of the boot loader and choose to boot linux by putting a boot-floppy in?

in dos run "fdisk /mbr" once you have made a boot disk for linux, with mkbootdisk

Thankyou for that quick response!
Just one question: Is there anything I should know before I mess with the mbr?
It's just that I don't want to find I can't boot WindowsXP anymore after using fdisk!

I have a primary master (c:\) disk with WinXp on it and a primary slave partitioned into an NTFS part and a Linux (mandrake) part.

I want the pc to boot straight into WinXP when it is turned on (I'm not being anti-Linux it's just that the rest of my family use XP)!

I want to boot Linux by inserting a boot-floppy before I turn it on.

Thankyou.

The command fdisk /mbr rewrites the MBR with Microsoft's bootloader; I'm just not sure you will find fdisk on your XP computer (my Win2K doesn't have it). If you don't find fdisk, the alternate is a little more work, but I think a better solution. Use your Windows Rescue Boot Disk or, if you don't have one, the XP installation CD. Boot from them and get to the rescue console. From the CD you'll have to go through a menu and a couple of submenus to get to the option to start the Rescue Console. Just keep picking repair options at each menu until you have a Rescue Console option.

Once there (it will be a DOS prompt), simply issue this command:

fixmbr

It will ask you if you are sure you want to do this and then not believe you and ask again. I believe I colorfully explained to my monitor, as I was doing this yesterday, that I had already answered the question! When Windows finished with its stupid questions, it did a great job of repairing my MBR.

To boot Linux from a floppy will require that you have created the floppy of the current kernel. If you haven't, in a terminal window as root, type this:

uname -r

This will return your current kernel number. Replace the <kernel> parameter in the next command with that number:

/sbin/mkbootdisk <kernel>

This will write the boot floppy you want.

Now, why not configure a boot loader to give you the option, but have XP as a default? LILO, Grub and NTLDR will all do that. When you turn the computer on, it will eventually give you a menu for a few seconds. If you do nothing, XP boots. Otherwise, you could select a different OS.

Just a thought.