Trouble installing Windows XP on gateway netbook

[url=http://komku.blogspot.com/2008/11/install-windows-xp-using-usb-flash-disk.html][/url]I bought a Gateway LT3103 with Windows Vista and I'm having trouble installing XP on it from a USB stick.

11.6" screen
2gb ram
athlon xp 2600+ (think it might have a diff mobile name, not sure)
x1270 graphics

It came with Vista and ran it pretty well, but I assume it would be even better on XP. I followed the instructions at http://komku.blogspot.com/2008/11/ [...] -disk.html

the first time you boot to the usb stick you pick the second option "TXT Mode Setup Windows XP, Never unplug USB-Drive Until After Login", I did this and formatted my main partition and XP appeared to install without a problem. After that phase of the installation windows restarts the PC, according to the instructions that is when you pick the first option "GUI Mode Setup Windows XP, Continue Setup + Start XP"

when I do this it says system could not start because the following file is corupt
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll

any ideas what could cause that and how I can fix it? im a really tech savy guy but I dont know how to fix this. google searches turned up pretty random results. any advice would be appreciated, thanks

this is from the comments section on that page

At January 21, 2009 12:49 AM, Anonymous said…

'Worked great for me thank you. I did have an issue at first with it saying, hal.dll is missing or corrupt. Stumped me for a while as the dll was there and fine. Twigged after a while, windows had tried to create a duel boot in the boot.ini file which is located at the very root of your windows installation, so normally C:\boot.ini. Go in there and remove the line which isnt "\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"'

any ideas on how to do that? the boot.ini on the memory stick doesnt even have that line in it

...why don't you just use a CD?

Edit: Whoops, nevermind, this is a netbook. I didn't know Gateway made them.

Anyway, you're not looking for the boot.ini on the stick - you're looking for the one on the netbook's hard disk. The only way I would think you could find it is to use a Live linux distribution that you can boot from a flash drive. Or remove the hard disk and use another computer to edit it.

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

K I got that linux distro and figured out how to access my hard drive and boot.ini

tryin to figure out what that guy means by "Go in there and remove the line which isnt "\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"'

it looks like

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS\"Microsoft Windows XP Professional"
/noexecute=optin /fastdetect

there are a lot of lines in there that arent the one he specified, anyone understand this?

edit: the more I look at that the more right it looks. I dont see any issues with that hmmm

sounds wierd, i used it before a long time ago. maybe ill just put my windows 7 beta on it for now. thanks a lot for the help