Good post....
I'm presently struggling with a similar Windows/Linux problem. Perhaps someone could shed some light on my issue, I think it could be helpful for others also as it may eliminate several other people's complications when multi-booting OS's.
I have several versions of Windows installed on my comp using Ranish, all of my partitions are primary partitions if I understand it correctly.....none are extended. My first partition is 1G, I have all my Windows put the swap file there and it is recognized as the E: drive. Then I have a data partition at the end of the drive, recognized as D: and I keep all my installed program files there....Each OS is set to the 1st active partition when I choose a partition to boot from, and is thus seen as the C: drive. I basically use Ranish to do all my partitioning, and for selecting which OS to boot from and which partitions are set active in the MBR. This all works excellent for booting to all the MS operating systems, but I haven't figured out how to make it work for Linux yet. Originally I thought it would work the same way, but.....my comp spits back the frustrating 'No Operating System Installed' message. Presently if I want to boot to Linux, I must select the Linux partitions as active, save it in the MBR, and boot from floppy. Anyone know if this is simply an issue of selecting to install the loader on the first active partition when I install? I could've sworn I did select that option.....but maybe I was just drunk?
I enjoy the flexibility Ranish allows me, and would encourage anyone interested in playing with multi-booting/experimenting to play around with it....however make sure you have a backup of your MBR that you know how to restore if you decide to give it a shot. If you mess up your MBR, don't worry as long as you don't format anything, and all you have to do is restore your backup. Or if you mess it up and don't have a backup....once you are comfortable with Ranish, it's not too tough to re-create the MBR.