I know you can use the NTldr boot.ini file. I've never done it and wouldn't want to but it may work in your situation. Here's something I found http://jaeger.morpheus.net/linux/ntldr.html
 

Thanks for the link, I may try that once I've got everything set up so it's useable... But I'm pretty sure that I can boot Windows then disconnect the drive and pop the battery in if needed.

This should work, depending on what the system sees the hard drive as once it is in the bay.
 
If you use the NT bootloader, just do not pick the Linux option unless the drive is in the bay.

Sounds like a fun solution... considering I've had no experience with Linux and very little experience modifying boot files in Windows... But the tutorial lays it out pretty well so I may be able to pull it off.
 
One problem though... Fedora doesn't come with LILO... it uses GRUB so the changes would be different.

I just had a thought... What if I installed the GRUB loader to the secondary hard drive, then set the boot priority to boot from the secondary drive? I THINK it wouldn't mess with the primary drive at all, and when you remove the secondary hard drive it just boots from the original Windows MBR. Any thoughts as to whether this would work or not?

Actually Fedora does come with Lilo as an option, I believe. It should be a choice when you get to the bootloader part of the install. I bet it defaults to Grub, but click on the dropdown menu when you get to this part and see if it allows Lilo as an option. I have not tried it with grub or lilo. Maybe I will experiment on my secondary system.
 
If your bios allows booting from a secondary drive, yes, this should work. Just make sure that you choose the correct designation for the second drive when installing lilo.
 
Before doing anything, I would try a live cd based distro like Knoppix to see what the system sees the second drive as, once it is in the system. If you are lucky, it should see it as hdb. Of course, it would need to be formatted first to be seen.
 
I just thought of a possible catch. Is your XP system using NTFS or a fat32 filesystem? The referenced article doesn't mention this as a possible issue, of course, it is an old article.
 
 

Originally posted by danleff:

Quote:I just thought of a possible catch. Is your XP system using NTFS or a fat32 filesystem? The referenced article doesn't mention this as a possible issue, of course, it is an old article. 

 
It is NTFS, which means that I can't change XP files blah blah blah, so that link won't work.

Actually, I just did it and found a work around. It does work.
 
If you would like, I will post it on my website later this week.
 
Essentually what you do is make the bootsect.lnx file and copy it to a floppy. Then when in XP, copy it to the C: drive (which is usually the boot drive). I altered it a little so that I can boot XP, or go into lilo and boot any of my three distros on my test box.
 
 

Originally posted by danleff:

Quote:Essentually what you do is make the bootsect.lnx file and copy it to a floppy. 
I don't have a floppy drive.
 
EDIT: But when I think about it again, I'm starting to think about addind a ~5 gig partition on my main drive so I could jockey my files through that I guess.

you might want to consider making a 120MB /boot 'trampoline' on the primary drive.
 
Use partition magic to shrink the WinXP partition 120MB and move it 'down' that same 120MB.
 
If there's an OEM partition ahead of the WinXP partition, then leave that one alone
and create the /boot partition in between the OEM and WinXP partitions.
 
With that done, use Grub and go ahead and install it in the MBR of the primary drive,
since you'll now always have /boot/grub around to direct your OS loading.