>> I have two primary HD disks: Disk 0 has Windows XP on it. Disk 1 has
nothing on it.

Benjamin, you are in the ideal situation.  When I decided to mess with
GNU/Linux I first added a second hard drive to my machine.

XP shall not touch any Linux drive as long as it does not know about it.
Windows 9x (95, 98 and ME) only understands FAT (FAT12, FAT 16, FAT32).
Windows NT, 2000 and XP understand FAT and NTFS.  All else is left untouched
unless you deliberately ask Windows to create new virtual disks (or
partitions). This _may_ happen in a "product restore" made with one of those
barbarian customized CDs with drivers + XP all mixed together, but even then
you are usually allowed to choose on which partition to plop down the
dominant operating system.

In a SL install, when you reach the partitioning stage, the program will
recognize the Windows disk(s) and offer you to add XP to the boot menu.  If
you want to do a one-shot install and keep using it, you can let the Linux
bootloader handle both Windows and Linux.  Just make sure that you select
the empty disk for Linux and leave the Windows disk alone.


If, like me, you want to experiment, I suggest you do as follows:

- Get a boot floppy or boot CD with a wonderful little thing called "GAG"
(bad name, good SW), which is a pure "boot _selector_" - something that
points the system to kick start any of a number of boot _loaders_, each
installed in the same partition as the corresponding operating system.
(http://gag.sourceforge.net/)

- Install SL on the empty physical hard disk.  Choose not to let SL handle
booting "the system".  A few steps later SL will offer to install the SL
bootloader in its own partition (either the one you use for "/", or the one
used for "/boot" if you make a separate one).

- Then install GAG and add entries for XP and SL on its (graphical!) menu.
Do read the instructions, identifying the correct partitions is slightly
tricky, but there' no risk if you select the wrong one!  Windows seems to
have a bootloader automatically installed in its boot disk (a.k.a. as C:)
and be happy to be kickstarted by a foreign bootselector.  In fact, NT, 2000
and XP also offer a boot selector (ntloader?) of their own, which can be
used to kick Linux into life - but I have no experience with that.

The advantage is that if you mess up a bootloader, it won't affect the other
systems, and also that GAG is embarrassingly easy to restore.  If you have a
floppy drive you can make an exact copy of your GAG setup on floppy,
reinstall it on HD, and vice versa ad infinitum, without even having to
reenter each individual OS. If you have a legacy free system, you may have
to boot from the GAG CD and do the menu entries afresh.


The caveat:  first read how to restore the NT (XP) bootselector and
bootloader, just in case you mess up a bit.  Also, even if you have separate
HDs, DO A PROPER BACKUP!  I don't backup anything on purpose anymore, but I
have a decent standing backup policy and I lucked into never losing a byte
of useful data in a Linux install.