fresh load of mandriva 2006 on a winxp pro box
 

ok, before i do this again, how do i load 2006 w/o smashing win xp..?? loaded a few days ago & it smucked up windows.. so i wiped everything & reloaded win xp.. been a year so it was due anyway.. the other day it gave a "ntldr is missing" error... oh, i have 2 hard drives..
thanks

The process to install Mandriva 2006 with windbloze should work if you first of all have free disk space for Mandriva to install to. This means there the disk space does is not in use by any other OS. You have XP installed and working, that is a pre-req to a trouble free installation.

Put the Mandriva install disk in, and boot the system with it. Most of the questions are straight forward enough. There will be an option to create partitions for the installation of Mandriva. Use it, but be careful here. It should allow you to partition and format the free space. At a minimum I recommend three partitions. One for '/', one for 'swap' and one for 'home'. Mandriva will do it this way if you allow it to. It does not matter which disk you put Mandriva on. My system has W98, Mandrake 9.2 and my main OS is Mandriva 2006; on a two disk system.

Some where through the installation it will ask you if you want to install ( and where ) a boot loader. On a dual boot system you have to install one. Install it to the 'mbr'. ( Master Boot Record ). Install Grub, it is the most flexible. It should detect your XP installation, and add it to the Grub menu. Allow it to do that. You can choose which OS is the default OS to boot, and how long the menu will appear, before the default is loaded. Theses options can be changed after the installation, if and when you decide you want to. That should be it. Boot the system, and verify both OS's can be loaded.