a right result - finally!
dai,
just the one DVD drive i'm afraid - HOWEVER . . .:wave:
as a result of your ISO comment i reckon i've sussed the issue last night - well, this morning actually after spending what seemed like most of the previous day yesterday trying to crack this task.
the slipstreamed files were burned to cd as an iso file (late last year) BUT the cd/dvd software that i had used at that time did not support 'bootable' cd's - but i didn't know that at the time, even tho' it claimed it did.
my route to a solution:-
after some research and surfing i found
http://www.helpwithwindows.com/WindowsXP/winxp-sp2-bootcd.html
so downloaded nero 7 trial from:-
http://www.nero.com/enu/Downloads.html
and installed it.
then followed the step-by-step instructions given by helpwithwindows.com
AFTER making sure i had the slipstreamed files to hand and the original OS install disk in the cd/dvd drive (so that the MSC.img was available).
it took a little while to figure out how to drive the nero 7 software and locate the bootable cd option, after that it was downhill all the way (pretty much).
i did have a look at the dvdPROinfo item and then put it to one side as it seemed to cause me to ''fog up'' for some reason.
thanx for your iso nudge, it did the trick for me

ray:
yo