How do I dual boot Windows 2000 and Linux from NTLoader?

Install Win2K as usual onto NTFS, and ensure you have also created the four Win2K boot/recovery disks.

Boot the system with the boot disk that comes with Red Hat Linux 6.2, then install Linux from the Red Hat CD-ROM.

Create your Linux "/" and swap partitions on a spare disk or partitions.

When prompted, select "Yes, make a BOOT DISK." You use this disk in step 8 to get into Linux. If you choose "put LILO to LINUX partition boot record instead of MBR" you may skip the next 3 steps.

Linux overwrites the Win2K Master Boot Record (MBR). Boot Win2K using the four recovery disks, go into Recover, then select Command mode.

When prompted, log on as Administrator.

Execute the fixboot and fixmbr commands. You can now boot Win2K again as usual.

To boot Linux from NTLoader, insert the Linux boot disk and restart the system.

Log on to Linux as root.

Type cd /etc and examine the lilo.conf file. At the beginning of this file, you will find an entry that shows where the default boot partition is (e.g., /dev/had).

Modify this entry (e.g., using EMACS) so that it points to the disk and partition you installed Linux to. For example, if you installed Linux to /dev/hdc1, alter the original entry to reflect the appropriate disk and partition. In this case, you would change /dev/hda to /dev/hdc1. (If you don't remember where you installed Linux to, the last entry in lilo.conf will have an "image" entry that specifies the root disk/partition.

Now execute LILO to write out the boot entry to /dev/hdc1 (type the command LILO without arguments). You should see a warning about this disk/partition not being on the first disk. Ignore it; we're happy that it's not stomping on the Win2K MBR!

You need to copy this boot sector to your Win2K partition so that boot.ini can reference it for your Linux entry. While you are still in Linux, use dd to raw copy the boot sector to an appropriate file.

# cd
# dd if=/dev/hdc1 bs=512 count=1 of=bootsect.lnx 

Now use mcopy to copy this file to a DOS disk.

# mcopy bootsect.lnx a: 

You can now shut down Linux.

# shutdown -h now 

Boot into Win2K.

Copy bootsect.lnx onto C: (and make it read-only).

Add to your boot.ini a Linux entry--for example

C:bootsect.lnx="Linux"