I have a dual (XP/Linux) boot Compaq Presario S4500UK with a couple of spare partitions on the boot drive which I want to use for testing different Linux distros/configs before installing them on "live" machines. I tried this with Oneiric which worked fine until I came to uninstalling the test system. Fortunately Oneiric uses Grub2 and so redirecting the bootloader to work from the original Linux partition was a piece of cake - if a bit annoying. I now need to do some tests on Hardy and DSL (Damned Small Linux), neither of which use Grub2. Question:

1. Is it possible to install a test operating system without adding/replacing the bootloader (ie so I can still use Grub2 from the original partition with its nice interface and recovery facilities)?
2. Is there another way of uninstalling/decommisioning a test OS which doesn't trash the boot loader? (The only way I know to do this is by deleting/reformatting the partition which takes with it the bootloader which is in that partition).

Any help would be much appreciated. Tks jg1