Thanks guys, I'll give that boot loader a shot as I figured this would happen. While installing a ran into a seemingly irremediable No Required CD DVD Device that wouldn't sort itself out until I pulled all pata devices from my mobo - 1 cd drive and the hdd that has XP installed on it.
Oh well. And you're right Wyodiver33 - less than 24 hours in and it's already on my tower and two of my laptops.
