Y'know ... let me toss some advice here ...
VMWare is a wonderous invention. 
Instead of trying to monkey around with "dual booting" and so forth, get a copy of VMWare
(buy it...) and set up as many Linuxes as you want, in
virtual machines that are hosted by Windows.
Intel-compatible microprocessors have extensive built-in support for virtualization. The chips actually have multiple complete sets of control-registers and the ability to switch between them under the direction of a so-called "hypervisor," namely, VMWare. It
isn't simulation or emulation: when a VM is in control, it runs most of the time at pure-native speed. And it is completely isolated from the host, which only gets involved in I/O operations (which by definition are slow anyway).
So... you can install Linux in a VM, get it working, make a snapshot. Then ...
"let's just try this one eensy-weensy thing" 
...
...
(damn!) ... snapshot the broken thing (just in case),
restore from another known-good snapshot, and try again.
Priceless. And you can have as many VM's as you want. You can even get 'em pre-assembled at places like "thoughtpolice.co.uk."
Virtualization technology is used everywhere all the time. It's
the way to go, I think.
