[joshd]

yea, put windows as the default, and for it to load it automaitcally after 3 seconds or something.

to change that file, depending on distro, you will wither have to be logged on as root, or use the copy command to you home directory, change it, and then use sudo or su + copy command to copy it back.

[TheMajor]

Bootstar and System Commander are good. But I don't know how well they handle Linux.

[horndude]

welll ALL linux distro's for the most part install a bootloader by default, why even mess with something else?

[Apokalipse]

you can edit the boot.ini Windows creates

[horndude]

will it boot linux? If not, why mess with it?

[Apokalipse]

I believe it will, provided the file system Linux is running on can be read by Windows

if they're on the same partition:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Window s
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows RG (Really Good)" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\LinuxDIR="some Linux version" /fastdetect

[horndude]

windows only reads/writes NTFS or FAT, linux will run on FAT but thats a custom job and most distros dont offer it as an option

most linux distros these days offer ext2 ext3 or reiserFS

standard way of doing this is installing windows first, then installing linux to a separate partition and letting GRUB or LILO boot either one, usually they will set it up automatically

[Apokalipse]

I believe some people have gotten Linux to read and write NTFS, although sometimes it doesn't turn out well

[horndude]

Linux will read NTFS no problem, but why even take a chance writing to it if you know its risky? Is it really worth having to go thru all the trouble to reinstall TWO OS's just for heck of it? I dont know about you, but having to set up PC's over and over again gets old fast, Id rather use it instead.

[hilowe]

Originally posted by apokalipse
I believe some people have gotten Linux to read and write NTFS, although sometimes it doesn't turn out well

NTFS read is done by quite a few distros by default.

Writing to NTFS is not a good idea from Linux. People can and have corrupted their NTFS partitions.

Back to the main topic. Let your Linux distro install a boot loader. It's just easier than trying to install your own.

During initial setup, you get the option to leave Windows as the default, and you can usually set the time.

If you miss that option during initial setup, it's not hard to change it afterward. You just need to find the config file for your bootloader. I've always used grub, so the file I look for is grub.conf, usually located in /boot/grub. It's pretty obvious once you get in there what needs to be edited for the default and the time.

Edit: Beat to the reply.