Booting linux without using boot manager

[Marcelo Coelho <mcoelho@student.dei.uc.pt>]

Hi!

My pc has a buggy cd-rom and has no floppy (i shooted it out the window 
when i lost an entire week of work because of it) and i'm using xp (i'm a 
newbie in linux) which already has a boot manager. Anyone knows how to use 
that boot manager or booting linux from dos or from xp?

Thanks in advance!!