Better, but no cigar
That was the furthermost I'd got with a USB stick trying to insall Win XP. It actually started the WIN set-up program. But I got aBLUE SCREEN OF DEATH message which probably couldn't be corrected with my level of expertise. So, now officially to PLAN B - I'll attempt the same thing with LINUX.
Next attempt is creating an Ubuntu 9.10 USB stick using UNetbootin (which is probably what I should have done ages ago).