I have a computer like below,

20G WD hard disk
hda1 200M boot disk FAT16
hda2 extend
hda5 win98 5G FAT32
hda6 win2k 5G NTFS
hda7 Data 5G FAT32
hda8 /boot 10M
hda9 /
hda10 /usr 3.5G
hda11 /home

I installed LILO in hda8, and I can dual boot w2k and win98 before and after installed linux, and I can boot linux 7.0 with the boot disk.
I want to dual boot linux with w2k and w98 by using NT loader.

I use following command to extract the linux boot sector to a file called linux.lnx
dd if=/dev/hda8 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/floppy/linux.lnx
then I copied this file to the C: drive which is hda1
and I edited the boot.ini file with one more option c:\linux.lnx="Linux"
Then I restart the computer, if I choose the linux option from the NT loader option menu, all I can see is a black screen with a blinking cusor on top left conner of the screen. What is wrong?

Would like to have your help!

I thought that you were supposed to copy the linux boot sector file to the same directory as boot.ini. Wouldn't that be on hda6? What is hda1 supposed to be for?

The boot.ini is located in the hda1. The reason that I use hda1 is to put all the boot files in the partition, such as autoexec.bat, config.sys, ntdetect.com, etc.
This is why I put the linux.lnx to hda1.

Another question, is the linux.lnx suppose to be 512k? or 512bit?
Cause the file is just 1K in size. If this is the reason, what is the wrong?
dd if=/dev/hda8 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/floppy/linux.lnx anything wrong with the command line?

Thanks!

In the ' dd ' command, ' bs ' is the number of bytes to read and write. ' count ' is the number of times to read and write. The command you used is to read and write 512 bytes one time. So, the actual file size would be 512 bytes.

It could be that you need to run the command /sbin/lilo. First, boot into linux and then check your /etc/lilo.conf to make sure it is correct. Then, run /sbin/lilo. Next, make a copy of the linux boot sector again ( dd if=/dev/hda8 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/floppy/linux.lnx ) and copy it to hda1. Then try to boot linux from win2k's boot loader.

I tried, but result is the same. I found something maybe is the cause. The file linux.lnx, if I look it in linux with ls -l, it shows the size of 512K, but after I copied into C: and look at it, it is 1K in size, what did I do wrong? I mounted the floppy as MS with this command, mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

The bootsector is 512 bytes not kilobytes. You have to have the bootloader installed properly on hda8 before you dd. Everytime you change something in lilo and rerun /sbin/lilo you have to dd the bootsector to file again
I think you also have to make the partition a boot partition you can do that in fdisk. I'm not totally sure on that because you are just linking it to the next partition.

I followed the same steps you did and my file was always 512 bytes in size. Are you sure it said 512k and not just 512? I don't know why your file would be 1k after being copied to the c: drive. Are you sure that the 1k was the actual file size and not just how much space it took up on the c: drive?