Dual booting Linux and Windows, on separate hard drives

[hitchface]

Hey folks,

I looked around for a way to do this, but all of the guides I found showed how to do it on 1 HDD. Maybe I just skipped one, in which case you can just slap me and show me a link, but I'd prefer to hear it from you folks.

Basically I already have Windows XP MCE on an 80 gig Barracuda, and I wanna put Ubuntu on my new HDD, which is a 250 gig Barracuda. Both are SATA, and I'd like to be able to choose which one to boot to at startup if possible. I'm totally new to this kind of operation, but am stoked about getting started. My new HDD is sitting in its anti-static bag waiting to be revved up, so any help is appreciated! Thanks,

Justin

[Alaron]

No problem. Hook up the new drive, make sure the BIOS recognizes it and set to boot from CD. Pop in your Ubuntu disc and run through the process. Ubuntu's installer will walk you through formatting the drive and adding a boot loader.

Jason will no doubt pop in to point out that this article is dated, but its still worth a read: http://www.pcmech.com/article/installing-ubuntu-linux/

[hitchface]

Incredible! Thanks for the info/link!

[hitchface]

Ok, problem. I knew this would happen...

I basically boot into DOS, under A drive (I don't have a floppy drive...) and the only thing I can do is execute a program called "wwmbu", and then I enter a German page with, of course, German instructions. The whole thing looks similar to the BIOS. What went wrong?

[hitchface]

Ok, so I figured that problem out, got the OS installed. It was working normally, but I would get this error every now and then (a restart usually fixed it). Now I am getting that same error every single time. I tried re-installing Ubuntu (since it only really takes about 25 minutes anyways...), and the error kept on coming. It goes as follows:

[ 79.123557] ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
[ 79.302405] Kernel panic - not syncing: IO-APIC + timer doesn't work! Boot with apic=debug and send a report. Then try booting with the 'noapic' option.
[ 79.302439]

At this point, I can't do a thing except restart. I can't find out how to boot with apic=debug, but I did try it with the 'noapic' option. Once it supposedly boots up, X Server (or similar) has issues, I have no GUI, and I am basically in DOS...which doesn't help me one bit.

I am tempted to update my BIOS, because an update came out last month that I certainly don't have, and I suspect it might solve the problem. Any suggestions or advice?

[hitchface]

Anyone? I am totally stuck here with a 250 gig HDD that does nothing.

[hitchface]

5th post in a row...right on. Got it working.