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People give me laptops with XP on them, (mostly) working, including 
support for built-in wireless cards, network cards, modems, USB, and 
sound, that I can't get to work yet in BL, so I am keeping XP to go online 
with, but I want to add BL.

If XP is FAT32 and was installed on top of Win98 or DOS, you already get 
the choice at boot time.  (Just boot into 'WINDOWS', or attrib -r -s -h 
boot.ini and change the shorter line with WINDOWS to read DOS if you 
prefer than attrib +r +s +h).  You can reformat to FAT32 and sys with 
DOS71 (Win98) and then reinstall XP, but then you have to hunt down 
drivers (in my case I lost sound in one laptop, wireless in another).
Supposedly there are ways to add DOS to XP in NTFS too.

I have run across a few very complex sets of instructions on how to add 
DOS to XP in FAT32, involving sys c: (now boots to DOS), XP installation 
CD recovery console fixboot (boots to XP again), and also bootcfg /rebuild 
(asks you whether to add other versions of Windows and name them but this 
part does not work even though it modifies boot.ini - it won't boot to 
'Windows98' or 'DOS').  Avoid fixmbr if you already got it working 
dual-boot with linux and XP (this process managed to delete XP)

Someone else packaged three files to be added to a Windows boot disk
containing things like debug and choice already.  Have not tried it yet.

If you have a floppy drive just boot from floppy disk.  I was able to 
shrink XP (after removing hibernat.sys, the swap file, and all restore 
points) and defrag, using PQMagic 8 (previous versions can destroy XP), 
make ext2 partitions and install BL, and boot with DOS floppy then to BL 
with loadlin.  Also to set up BL with lilo (see archives about how to copy 
the bootsector that lilo makes, using dd, to a file in c:\ and add a line 
to boot.ini to choose XP or LINUX).

Newer laptops don't have floppy disks and even older ones are sometimes 
missing them (people pass them along with a CD-ROM drive in the multibay).

Is there some simple way to add DOS boot to XP in FAT32?
sys c: creates c:\bootsect.dos (hidden file)

Sindi Keesan