Okay, to begin, the intent is to maintain XP with its boot manager until I'm ready to let go of XP completely. What I want to do is to be able to install a linux distro to one of the available partitions and be able to reboot and select its listing from the c:\boot.ini file.

Now, I know how to create the bootsect.bin file and point boot.ini to that...but I've only found info on the internet on how to do that from a LiveCD. (install the LiveCD distro to root, then boot back into the LiveCD and run the necessary command from within Terminal). What I'd like to find out is: How to create a bootsect.bin file for a distro that doesn't have a LiveCD; meaning, you boot onto that distro's install CD and away you go. I can select /root to install Grub, but once I reboot I'm unable to get back to the distro I just installed. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance to all that respond.


EisBlade

Some distros give you the option to boot into Rescue Mode (Fix broken system), or something of that nature. You can also use some other live cd other than your distro (Knoppix for example).

I can install any distro, LiveCD or not, point Grub to install at /root, and then use any LiveCD distro to run the commands for the bootsect file matching the newly-installed? Awesome. That opens many doors of distro testing. (I'm still trying to pick one out.) Thank you.