[QUOTE=status1;13760]Thanks for the reply
I was more interested in the regular ide hard drive setup
To be more specific I can make a slave drive bootable from xp but perhaps I should have used another word for bootable
What I meant was to make the slave drive a system drive
Like when I boot from the windows 98 startup floppy I can type sys c: and make the hard drive bootable to the command prompt and I can also use the format c: /s from the hard drive to do the same thing to a slave drive

I am somewhat new to xp so I am not too familiar with it but I tried those things and those commands are not used in xp
The other problem I see is that xp doesn't seem to have a dos command prompt it's only available in safe mode so that means that xp cannot be installed from the command prompt unless a windows 98 boot disk is used
Keep in mind that I am trying to see if the post about installing xp without a cd or floppy can be done

I was wondering about a third party boot manager but I am not sure how would that work
Would that have to be installed on the primary drive or the slave ?QUOTE]

Xp does not have or use DOS it utilizes a simulated Dos prompt for certain commands and that is all. That is why the MSDOS program must be installed as the tutorial says. Now to save you some time.....the tutorial works if you follow the directions as stated and not try to jump ahead and ignore the steps as given...

Third party boot managers are the only way to go as for as I am concerned. It is the simplest and easiest option on installing dual boot operating system options. You will still need the installation discs or a way to install the operating system to the desired drive/partition.

Third party boot managers work by hiding/blocking the boot files of the installed operating system from being used until one actually needs to boot from that system...in so doing it overrides the 4 bootable drives protocol built into windows and allows you to boot up to a couple of hundred operating systems (some boot managers are limited) and you must use the new boot manager to set-up the partitions for you.
The installation of the boot manager can be installed to any drive and it will automatically set up all drives that are installed or that will be installed.

Once the boot manager is installed then you are prompted to boot to which operating system (if installed) or to install new operating system to what drive/partition! It is performed as though the installation drive is the only drive to install to as all drives and partitions are hidden during the new installation. You have to install all drivers as in a new installation and all programs to each operating system....the files can be shared between operating system as in a regular dual boot set up.