I have some questions about the grub introduction located here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...icle&artid=207

The way my system is set up is hda has 2 win xp partitions on it, and hdb has the main linux partition and the swap partition on it.

So for the command 'grub-install --rootdirectory=/boot /dev/hda', should I use '/boot' or just '/'?

Also, the 'dev/hda', what is that specifying? Is it the drive where grub will overwrite the mbr, or is it the drive with all the grub files on it? If it's the file with all the grub files, how do you specify which mbr to overwrite?

I don't even use the rootdirectory part .
/dev/hda is where the MBR is and the grub will take that over. The grub files like stage1 and stage2 will most likely get put in /boot/grub by the grub installer.

firstly I am trying to get rid of that answer and hope people find this
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...troubleshooter

can you post your /etc/fstab file for linux and if you have not xp in that file what each C drive is on for hda
eg hda is partition 1 first C drive part 2 is its swap part 3 is second XP

2) you have multiple choices with 2 mbrs. If bios boot order is hda then hdb (xp then linux) then grub can go into mbr for hda or boot order changed to hdb and grub into that mbr or as per above link you keep ntloader in hda and chainload grub which is put into the PARTITION of linux /boot

we need more info to help you out if you don't understand what I just said.

3) to begin with have a look at the keep windows bootloader section of the link and see if that appeals.