Dual Boot Dim 8400

Some of the older Dell systems had an option in the BIOS in which you could individually select the hard drive to boot from.  My XPS T system has such an option and I find it very useful for booting up a backup OS which I keep on my third hard drive.  Unfortunately Dell eliminated this BIOS option on the later models and I don't recall anyone posting in this forum with a solution.  You might want to consider using the dual boot option of Windows XP.  From my limited experience in playing around with that OS,  I found that you can not only designate the partition you want the second OS to boot from, but also the drive.  This maybe a software solution to the problem.

 

If you don't get any additional responses here you might consider posting your question over in the Dimension - Hard Drive.  The BIOS forum has a rather limited audience and may not be the best venue in which to find someone who may have found a way to work around the problem.