Linux on Vostro 1500: what happen to Dell's boot options?

Ok, even if I shouldn't have the time to do that right now, I am going to install a temporary copy of Linux alongside with Vista.

I nuked Media Direct's partition (because I had to remove a primary partition in order to create an extended partition), I resized Vista's partition (from within Vista, since the new NTFS is not yet well supported by gparted and qtpart), and then from within a Linux live CD (Knoppix 5.1.0) I created a couple of ext3 partition and a swap partition.

I was going to install kanotix (which seems to have recognised everything I am aware of in my Vostro) when I had this doubt...

I know that if I install linux and then grub in the mbr, I can add an entry to grub's menu.lst in order to load vista.
But, what happens to the other Dell's options to load the diagnostic tools and booting from dvd? Where are they stored? Will they be wiped out?

I am afraid that _they_ are the ones in the MBR.

Does anybody know?

 

I believe that is actually stored in the BIOS, therefore it's hard-coded into the firmware, and there's no way you could actually remove it unless you were to flash the bios

 

That's good news.
At any rate, I had this penguing kicking to get out of its egg, and I have already started the installation. Only I instructed Kanotix to place grub on its own partition. I will fix that later, when I'll install my pure Debian distro. For the time being I think I'll boot from fl---

Jeez!

Ok, I'll boot from the usb pen.
Or I'll install grub in the MBR.

Thanks for answering.

 

I solved by downloading BCEdit and adding a linux entry to Vista's bootloader.
In this way in the future I could also use the local grub installation to boot linux via the media direct button (at least as long as the bios let me boot it even if it's not on a primary partition, but it's the first logical partition in the extended partition)

Oh, yes: the diagnostic and boot order options are still there and work fine.