I know this doesn't totally pertain to linux b/ i'm having trouble booting winxp in safe mode. My boot disk and install cd both fail to allow me to enter safe mode, so I was wondering if i could boot into winxp's safe mode through the grub bootloader. If you could help I would be very thankful.

hello,
search the forum for dual booting, i am pretty sure it has been done. i don't use MS windows so i have nt tried myslef.

I don't use Linux so I don't know.

No way unless your Win is FAT32, which I doubt. Most likely is NTFS, in which case, you must not use ANY boot loader on MBR.

To dual-boot NTFS & ext2

Back up your files & favorites on Windows
Defrag & scandisk thorough
Run fips.exe from CD1
Shrink Windows partition & create 2GB+ Linux partition
Install Linux
Install lilo on 1st sector of Linux partition
dd if=/dev/hda3 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1
cp boot.lnx /mnt/floppy
Boot XP
copy boot.lnx c:\
edit boot.ini
After multi(0)..., add
C:\boot.lnx="linux"
Reboot