Dual Boot

I knew from the start I would feel much safer switching to linux if I had a saftey net, a familiar windows box waiting to catch me. But I wanted to be really really safe. I don't want to modify the windows hard drive in any way. The following portion of my lilo.conf file makes that possible. It allows my linux drive to be physically configured as the primary master but causes the computer to pretend that the windows drive is primary master instead when windows boots. A similar "safe" setup is possible with GRUB too.

other=/dev/hdb1
  label="Windows"
  table=/dev/hdb
  map-drive=0x80
  to=0x81
  map-drive=0x81
  to=0x80

I'm now completely switched over and rarely need to call upon my safety net other than to use proprietary VPN software.

The grub solution is achieved by adding something like the following to /boot/grub/menu.lst

title           Windows
root            (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
map             (hd0) (hd1)
map             (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader     +1