This is from a post on a popular thread on the BeOS forums. I had wondered why BeOS' bootman would not work on my new XP install. The lady must have had that same problem and actually looked into it.
She offered this reply:
" I had problems with Bootman and XP. Bootman overwrites the whole 512 bytes of sector in the MBR, even if it does not need 512 bytes. The problem is that WinXP is inserting 7 hex numbers at the end of the MBR, which is needed to boot. Bootman overwrites this.
I suggest you either use a hex editor to put these numbers back manually after you use bootman (write down these numbers to a paper first), or use an XP-aware/compatible boot manager.
Bootman is history for me, because of this limitation, making XP unbootable on most drives (not always though). I have moved to LILO. "
XP and BeOS are also compatible with GRUB
The issue with Bootman is only on some setups where XP is usually not on the first primary IDE drive. Many people could use bootman but ...... if you don't make a backup of the MBR first as Bootman suggests then you run the risk of a borked system.
