> It changes for a second, denies me input, then automatically swtiches back to A:\.
Well yeah, you have real DOS on a floppy, with its lowly FAT partition and a hard disk with an NTFS partition. It simply does not recognise it as a formatted disk so it can't possibly change to c:\
What are you going to do when you get there anyway?
If you haven't done so already, you need to 'defrag' your NTFS partition (to pack all the data to one end of the disk) and create another EMPTY partition for Linux to occupy.
Does XP disk admin permit NTFS partitions to be resized? If not, you need an appropriate tool to do it.
Once you have your free partition, then I would think you can just put your bootable Linux install CD and boot straight off the CD and install Linux into your nice new empty partition.
No DOS required.
Make sure your important XP information is backed up. Although the risk is fairly small, mishaps at this level tend to be spectacular.
