Linux/XP Startup Question

[Mr. Rogers]

I am dual booting Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu. When I start up my computer, I get the GRUB boot selection screen which allows me to choose which OS I want to start up in. Sometimes, I want to start up in Windows but I am in the middle of doing something, and so, miss my chance to select it on the screen and I come back to Ubuntu and have to restart and do it again. Is there any file I can change to make Windows the default selection?

[Mithrandir]

Look in /boot/grub/grub.conf (or whereever your main grub.conf file is) for starters. You should be able to change the value:
default=0
to
default=1
and that should solve the problem. If it's set to 1 already, set it to 0 instead. You can also change the splash screen using this value:
splashimage=(hd0,1)/boot/grub/images/splash.xpm.gz
(where you've got an image in /boot/grub/images/ and you've got your boot partition on hd0,1).
You'll need to get a gzipped jpeg, if I remember right. If you want, you can even write a simple startup script that randomly changes splash.xpm.gz to point to one of the images in that directory - effectivly giving you rolling/random images on startup. Have fun!