Your system will not boot.............

There is a way to force the Windows boot loader to load a Linux
installation, you'll find it online. It involves copying the MBR to a file
and telling the Windows boot loader to execute that file, which then loads
up Linux. Very round-about.

I would recommend loading Grub.

I'm no expert but when i researched the dual-boot options i came to
the conclusion that the best way was to have two hard drives. That
setup works very easily with 6 month releases as it allows one to
fully check each HD.

One thing i have found useful with both winblows and ubuntu is the
have a remote drive for data (which i can also just connect easily to
a different machine when necessary) and just HD system drives on the
machine. I have bitter memories of forgetting to backup data when i've
been under pressure and so don't take the risk now. perhaps i'm
cautious or old fashioned but i like to 'scandisk' thoroughly each HD
before installation.

I've already moved all my main data to an external drive, allowing me
to shrink the Win partition greatly.

I've tried using 2 hard-drives for dual booting, but unfortunately I
have defective mobo's. The Intel one, only lets me use 2 drives at a
time (hdd/dvd), and I don't feel like getting a USB/IDE adapter just
yet (remains a future choice). My other non-win machine, a Biostar
mobo, won't let me boot from the second drive, even though I make the
necessary changes in the BIOS, it's still boots the same way. I
haven't tried booting from an external drive, but I know it's slower
compared to an internal one.

And I separated the Ubuntu partitions, because I read somewhere it'd
make it easier to install an upgrade, leaving the /home and swap
separately. Guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. The
winXP on my main/dual-boot machine seems to be corrupted a bit, and
since I don't have any winxp disks to repair it, I'll just use it
until it's no longer worth keeping.

All my data goes onto the external drive, but I have another
hdd-enclosure that I use to clone the main drive, being able to swap
it, in case anything happens to it. My work-around for re-activating
windows doesn't work anymore, should I change the mobo again.