Dual-Booting Linux and Windows NT/2000/XP
As mentioned earlier, when you run Windows NT, its boot loader expects to be the one in charge; therefore, the standard way to dual-boot Windows NT and Linux is to add Linux as an option on the NT boot menu. This section describes how to do that. The information provided here also applies to Windows 2000 and Windows XP, which use the NT loader.
To set up dual booting with the NT loader, you need to provide the loader with a copy of the Linux boot sector. We’ll describe how to do that on a computer running Windows NT with an NTFS filesystem (note that Windows NT should be installed on your system already). See the NT OS Loader+Linux mini-HOWTO for more information and other alternatives.
You should have a Linux boot floppy or CD available so that if necessary you can boot Linux before the NT boot loader has been modified. You also should have a DOS-formatted floppy to transfer the boot sector to the Windows NT partition. If you are running LILO and it is already installed, you may need to modify /etc/lilo.conf as described later. Otherwise, install LILO or GRUB to the boot sector of the Linux partition; once the Linux boot manager is installed and you have a configuration file, you can set up the system for dual booting.
The following instructions assume your Linux partition is on /dev/hda2. If Linux is on another partition in your system, be sure to replace /dev/hda2 in the following examples with the correct partition. The instructions also ...