What @otheus is alluding to IS that the boot loader that comes with modern Redhat(& others) is GRUB & it detects the presence of a windows partition & creating a boot menu entry for it.

Which is why *most* implementations install XP first then Linux. I've used your method many moons ago which worked for me, then GRUB came along
(ps. don't uprade\install vista on the same HD as linux, vista can't co-exist)

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ms. stevi