So, what I did to fix my boot problems was to spend a bit more time preparing as well as allocating more space in the process to give me a better opportunity to work with Linux.
I learned about a tool called QTParted to be able to resize partitions from within Linux! I booted from the Ubuntu Live CD and installed QTParted using Application | Add/Remove… This allowed me to remove the partitions I had created on my slave drive and create a new one just for the swap space used by Linux. It also allowed me to shrink the 80GB partition on my master drive (C:) to 34GB. Of course, I had to make sure I had free space on the partition. Also, I used defrag in Windows before I started any of my repartition. Once I had the NTFS partition shrunk to 34GB, I had about 45GB of free space to install Ubuntu on.
I went ahead and installed Ubuntu again, this time using hda for the “root” partition and the hdb for the “swap” partition. The install went flawlessly! The CD was ejected and when the machine booted, I was presented with the GRUB boot menu that let me chose between Windows and Ubuntu with Ubuntu being the default. It felt great to be able to boot again without needing a CD to boot from.
Next, I will write about the mission critical applications I needed to get running – movie (avi/xvid) and mp3 support!