I have winxp on 1 hd and mandriva on a second hd.I have been manually switching the ide cable and thats getting old.Can I make a boot floppy that will let me select which hd to boot and set my box to boot from floppy?I've been searching and cant seem to find much on this.

Thanks for any help.

Your (current) practice is probably the worst imaginable - I'm surprised you haven't (physically) broken something already. Your proposed (floppy) solution is probably the next worst.

If you wish to keep your current set-up as-is, have a look at the BIOS settings. You should be able to change the boot disk simply by changing a single setting. Same affect as what you currently do, without the risks.
Not that I recommend this, but it is a simple option, used by many people if you believe posts here on LQ.

Better is to use either of your current bootloaders to load both systems. Most Linux users will (of course) recommend a Linux loader - grub is IMHO the better choice these days. New converts tend to want to keep their Windows system(s) "untouched", and not allow Linux loaders in the MBR of their Windows disk.

If you are using grub, post the Windows/Other portion of grub.conf (or menu.lst if Mandy uses that), and we can show you how to boot XP from grub without changing anything on your XP disk.

I agree with syg00
in addition post the result of fdisk -l (as root) from mandy
so we can be sure (and you as well) about which HD is XP.
You do not want to make a mistake and install grub on the wrong HD
(this can be recovered, but lets avoid that mistake in the first place)

Go to drakconf and then bootloader somewhere
Install grub if not there yet on the *right* HD, that is the linux one

For mandy you want to post /boot/grub/menu.lst

Make the bios boot 1st from the Linux HD

When you have Mandriver booted on power up freezing everything, no cable swap and no BIOS alteration.

As the standard boot loader of Mandriva is Grub. Assuming your XP is in the first partition and not booted as the 2nd disk it will be known to Grub as in (hd1,0). Your 1st disk is Mandriva. Grub counts from 0. So just add these lines to the bottom of /boot/grub/menu.lst

title My XP booted without cable swap
root (hd1,0)
map (hd1) (hd0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
chainloader +1

The two may statement effectively doing the cable swap by software.

The above will work unless you have complication in the disk, like a hidden partition for backing XP or left behind by the PC vendor.

Well first let me explain a little further(in doing this maybe it will help me understand also).
I just built my latest system 2 weeks ago.1 hd is the 80gb ibm out of my old box set as master with winxp home on it.The other hd is a seagate 80gb set as master with mandy 2005le on it.
I have never set one or the other as slave and plugged the ide cable to both to see what happened.(I was afraid windows commercialized slime would ooze through the cable and spread its infectious $$grubbing onto my nice linux system)...just kidding.
I've read on this board that windows bootloader(chainloader i believe)likes windows to be the first and only os in a box.
I should mention I wear a ground cuff when i'm inside a box.My first computer was a timex sinclair 1000 WITH the stackable ram modules.2k each I believe.lol.My first gui os was win 3.1.1(it was new then) so I'm not entirely new to computers just linux.Unfortunately all of my time has been spent just using programs,not programming.The only thing I actually need windows for is to use my website builder proggy and some of the macromedia studios proggy since I never bothered to learn html.But I'm working on that too.
If I opt to go this route do I leave both hd's set as master,plug them both in and enter the bios at startup and choose which disk to boot from?

# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 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/hda1 * 1 764 6136798+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 765 9729 72011362+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 765 904 1124518+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda6 905 9729 70886781 83 Linux
This is with only the linux hd plugged in.
I know i used grub on install but this is what i got
]# menu.lst
bash: menu.lst: command not found
# grub.conf
bash: grub.conf: command not found
Thanks for the help.Hopefully someday soon I'll be able to contribute to this board instead of just ask.I have passed out 6 of the 10 free ubuntu disk sets I got in the mail to some lifelong win users.5 of them want me to make them copies of my mandy install disks after messing with my system

Yep, as simple as that. Doesn't actually matter how you plug them, but leave them as master is o.k.

As suggested by the other guys, you need to look at /boot/grub/menu.lst - try the following from a terminal session to get a listing of itWith the Linux disk as the boot disk, saikees update should allow you to boot either system without need of a BIOS swap at all. If it fails, try changing the "root(hd1,0)" to "rootnoverify(hd1,0)" - I always prefer the latter for Windows systems.

[root@24-151-232-253 jeff]# cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
cat: /boot/grub/menu.lst: No such file or directory
[root@24-151-232-253 jeff]# cd /boot/grub/menu
bash: cd: /boot/grub/menu: No such file or directory
[root@24-151-232-253 jeff]# cd cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
bash: cd: cat: No such file or directory
Sorry?
i just tried plugging the ide cable to both hds and in the bios first boot device showed hd0(which is linux,has always been there)but now at the bottom of the list is hd1,hd2,hd3?
I selected 1,2,and 3(one at a time) saved and restarted.Right after the memory check on restart it froze and just had L at the command prompt?
I have the cable(has 2 hd connectors) plugged into 1 ide slot on my mobo.
Should I use another cable for the second hd and plug it into ide slot#2 on the mobo?

Thanks again.

Sorry - to quote one of my favourite movies, "what we have here is a failure to communicate".
Yes, you will need two cables, into the two interfaces. You can only have one master per cable. Personally I prefer to set the disks to "cable select" and forget about issues like this.
In your case, just use two cables.

Wonder if you are using lilo instead of grub; try the following commands(Hopefully) only one will be successful - just post the output.

Choosing which disk is master and which is slave is done by setting the jumpers on the back end of the hard drive. There should be a decal on the drive itself which tells you how to set the jumpers to designate which drive is master and which is slave. If the jumpers are not set properly, you will just confuse the BIOS.

It's also a good idea to edit the BIOS to mirror the jumper settings on the drives themselves.

If I recall correctly, Mandriva is derived from Red Hat. Therefore, you probably don't have /boot/grub/menu.lst. You should have /etc/grub.conf instead (same file; different name; different location).

[root@24-151-232-253 jeff]# which grub
/usr/sbin/grub
[root@24-151-232-253 jeff]# which lilo
/sbin/lilo
And both hd's are set to master.
and I also know where grub is now.wonder why lilo is there also?
i have installed about 10 different distros on this hd in the last couple of months.I always choose to format the entire disk on install.Does this not get the mbr too?
Thanks

oops I only have 2 ide sockets on my mobo.#2 is my cd burner.Burner set as slave on cable #2 maybe?

You can have 2 IDE per cable, but you may need a new cable
[edit appology, you have 2 connectors you said. Well then there is
no problem having 1 slave 1 master on this connector. But you do
not seem happy to do that...]

I use mandy LE 2005 one mine this where the menu lives
$ ls -l /boot/grub/menu.lst
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2438 Sep 18 00:03 /boot/grub/menu.lst

I would be tickled pink to do this but my machine is not happy with it.

I am not with it sorry,

did you follow the instructions about jumpers?

Heyyy I got it.For some reason the only config that will work is to have windows(ibm hd)jumpered as slave plugged into the slave conn on the ide cable and have linux(seagate hd) master/master.
Strange as I've read on here several times that windows wont boot as a slave dev?
Now at least I can enter bios and start winblows when I need to.I'm going to work on the grub config as well.Thanks for all the help.

This reguired physically moving the hd's in my box to get the cable to plug in correctly and did I get the scare of my life!
While trying several different configs last night I went to turn the box back on and nothing! absolutely dead.I freaked out,then I plugged in a "known good" box and nothing.

The one outlet on my power strip I plug my box into picked last night to go dead!
Is that wild or what?

Thanks again for the help.