Sorry if this is just going over something already answered but it would help if people could just look at how I plan to proceed and let me know if I am going to step on a land mine.

Computer: Dell Dimension 4300
Master: WD 80GB running windows XP sp2
Slave: Seagate 80GB (NEW)

OK now for my situation.
The wife is stuck on Windows and we need it for several reasons.
I would like to install Ubuntu to the new drive on a small partition. (Ubuntu because I have used the live CD and it automatically detected everything very well)
The wife does not want to go through a boot menu to run XP and I want to leave entire Master HD unchanged.
I am a little nervous replacing the XP bootloader.

Here's what I want to do in this order:

Obviously Backup any data in XP.

Install Slave Drive

Put install disk in CDROM and install Ubuntu on slave (using it to partition the drive for 10GB for Ubuntu 10GB for future trial OSes and 60GB FAT 32 that can be accessed from all OSes)

Install the ubuntu bootloader on the slave drive, leaving the XP bootloader intact.

Placing a bootloader on a CD (GRUB maybe? suggestions would help) that would ask me which OS to boot.
*side note, computer will not boot from USB



Is there anything here that cannot be done or are in the wrong order?
Where might I run into difficulties?

Thank you for double checking my processes, sometimes I plan to do some things that put the cart before the horse and get me in big trouble.

This gets asked all the time.
Separate drive is good. If you proceed as you plan, you can simply change the BIOS boot drive, and things will "just work". You'll even have a boot entry for Windoze when you use the Ubuntu disk.
Try making 'doze the default and hiding the grub menu - you just need to hit <ESC> to get the menu, and then select Linux.
If that flies, leave it like that - else, just make sure the BIOS order is changed before you hand the box back to her.

KISS is generally best.

So you suggest replacing the XP boot loader and having GRUB automatically point to XP?

I would like to make it so I can leave the boot order as CD first then Primary Master. It is like that right now, it takes an extra 2 seconds to see if the CDROM is empty but then it loads XP with out any action required. I would have to put my bootloader in the CDROM each time I wanted to start ubuntu. Is this not recommended? I know that I can have a dual boot with replacing the XP boot but I would like to leave it alone.

Nope - leave XP alone; don't want to risk the marriage ...
When you install Ubuntu, install grub to the MBR of the secondary disk.
When you change the (BIOS) boot disk order, that disk becomes the disk selected.

Change it back before you power the machine off. An unnecessary PITA as far as I'm concerned, but do-able.
Maybe your missus will accept grub if you make Windoze the default, and a short timeout.
If you do it this way, you can try both easily.

Can I put GRUB or LILO on a CD and use that to point at witch MBR to read?

EDIT: posted after/during previous posts. Sorry for interrupting.

Welcome.
No GNU/Linux distro will touch that, forget about it.
Say what? You are complicating things before you even start.
Learn this, from the tldp.org (anything there is very useful for many people so have the site in your bookmarks):
GNU/Linux Hard Drive Naming Convention:
So then you'll know where you'll be installing. So _install_, knowing that you'll need a swap partition too with about 110% of your ram size. You know you don't have to format the Windows partition, so go for it.
Once you have it installed, if you choose say the GRUB, and the Windows XP is in the hda1 partition, then you backup and the edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst, find a line "default 1", count how many titles you have until the windows partition title (hda1=hd0,0), then put that number instead of 1 in the example, to say, don't know "default 4" or something, then do "sudo grub-install hd0" to replace the previous GRUB. Your grub then is pointing to the Windows XP bootloader, if you want to enter GNU/Linux, have to select it from the grub before it hits the XP bootloader.
If you do not format any partition you need, you'll be fine, so learn the GNU/Linux HD naming convention and go forward.
Be very welcome to the free software community, feel free to post errors (and useful outputs) and do please read something from the lot of documentation you have before posting or search inside linuxquestions.org, specially to know if I'm wrong up there.

You can put it in a diskette too, why not, is not better?:
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...ot-floppy.html

EDIT: On a second thought, in Ubuntu, this other will be better:
sudo fdformat /dev/fd0
sudo mkfs -t msdos /dev/fd0
sudo mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /media/floppy
sudo mkdir -p /media/floppy/boot/grub
sudo cp /lib/grub/i386-pc/stage* /media/floppy/boot/grub
sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /media/floppy/boot/grub/menu.lst

You can alway try wingrub witch leaves windows as default

you would edit the menu.lst in wingrub to look like this

color cyan/blue blue/cyan

default=0

timeout=5

hiddenmenu



title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-10-generic

root (hd1,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-generic root=/dev/hdb1 ro quiet splash

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-10-generic

quiet

savedefault

boot



title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-10-generic (recovery mode)

root (hd1,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-generic root=/dev/hdb1 ro single

initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-10-generic

boot



title Ubuntu, memtest86+

root (hd1,0)

quiet

boot


I have some else that uses the system and i need to leave the MBR as is.
it will place a line in the boot.ini file for you that looks like this

C:\GRLDR="Linux System"