windowsxp&linux
to avoid the problem of multibooting of windowsxp and linux on same hard drive,
don't install grub on MBR but install grub at the first sector of /boot partition.
hope this will help :
my case
first installed windows xp on first primary ntfs partition hda1
then i have d: and e: as logical fat32 drives hda5 & hda6 respectively
then i have /boot partition on hda7, / partition on hda8 and swap as hda9
after installing linux, booted from floppy and in root terminal i typed
mkdir /mnt/d:
mount -t vfat /dev/hda5 /mnt/d:
dd if = /dev/hda7 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/d:/linux.bin
then i restarted in windows
copied linux.bin image from d: to c:
add the following line to the c:\boot.ini file using notepad.
c:\linux.bin="red hat linux 9"
and save it.
now restart the system
u will see two option at boot
1. windows xp
2. red hat linux 9
now reinstalling of one operating system cannot interfere with the boot of the other operating system.
hope it helped