It's been so many years since I used bootmagic I don't remember much about it.
But Partition Magic and a lot of other DOS based tools used a AUTOEXE2 file when it took more than one floppy disk to use the program. In PM it's used to load the DOS drivers, CD-Rom, SCSI, USB, etc.
The reason for that is the same autoexec.bat file can be used on both floppies. There is a line saying something like:
if exist call autoexe2.bat.
So on the first floppy the file would exist to load the drivers, once you swap it out for the second floppy you don't want the drivers to load again so that file would be missing (not exist) and the bat file would continue on without reloading drivers.
The file attributes and view settings between DOS and XP are a little different so just because a file is visible in DOS does not necessarily mean it's visible in XP.
Since you have a need to boot DOS more often than just to run PM, it's really not too difficult to set it up that way.
The only "Danger" in trying to set it up is that it's possible to loose the ability to boot XP. You can get "stuck" with only being able to boot DOS until you restore the XP boot by using a tool or booting to the XP disk and using the recovery console to run a "fixboot".
I can't remember but one of the 4 tools I used in the other thread did that.
If you have a "bootsec.dos" file somewhere (most likely on the XP partition or wherever "boot.ini" is located) you can add the DOS boot by adding a line to boot.ini:
C:\BOOTSECT.DOS="Boot DOS"
You can even leave out the name of the file because XP will automatically look for a file by the name of bootsect.dos
C:\="whatever you want the menu to say"
(Took me years to figure out how that worked because I had no idea it would automatically look for bootsect.dos).
The bootsect.dat file is a hex dump of the boot sector of the partition you want to boot. Also known as the "Volume Boot Record". It's the first 512 bytes of the partition you want to boot.
The problem encountered is that it contains partition information and so if the partition is changed or resized it becomes invalid and the partition won't boot anymore until a updated bootsec.dos is made.
That was a very common problem with dual booting windows 98 and XP. People would use PM to resize the '98 partition and all of a sudden it would not boot until it was fixed by generating a new bootsec,dos file.
Exactly how I learned to do this LOL
So it's really not too dificult and I think the second to last post on that previous topic may be the easiest.
Put debug.exe on the DOS partition if it is not already there. Boot DOS and use the steps I gave to generate the bootsec.dos file.
Back in XP, move the file to the XP partition and add the line to the boot,ini file for it.
That way does not mess with the XP boot at all but it's always a good idea to be prepared and have a way to restore the XP boot just in case.
Dave