I've been dual booting for some time now. First with MDK 8.1/2, then 9.0. Both with XP. I used Partition Magic the first time to size down the NTFS partition to only use half of the 20gb drive, then installed MDK on the second partition. MDK recognized everything nicely and at the end of the install I added "Windows" into the LILO boot config. When MDK 9 was released (and I saw it wasn't eating everyones computers willy nilly) I added a secon 20gb drive and put MDK there and gave the entire first drive back to XP (I must have my Everquest! :wink:
:!: A friendly word of warning :!:
Your problem may well be the downloaded software; or not - but with that you're playing with a loaded gun. I have seen remote control sleepers waiting for the command to join thousands of other "bots" in a denial of service attack, I've seen back door trojans, and software that looks innocuous but is actually recording keystrokes and web activity and sending it back to its origin. All of these from warez sites and a couple from Kazaa.
I've a friend who used to download everything and anything, especially from Kazaa (ever see that commercial where the computer tells the guy "You have reached the end of the Internet"? It's because my friend downloaded the whole damn thing onto his hard drive!). :wink: At any rate, he brought his computer to me to fix and I found several viruses and one small program that was trying to send traffic to a remote location which turned out to be a cable modem.
/em end warning mode
/em gets off soap box
At any rate, good luck. Post any problems you have here - there's LOTS of people with opinions just waiting to share. :P