installing windows on a Dell D400

[Moggbomber]

Alright, so I'm not a fan of Dell to begin with. I'm trying to format and install XP on a Dell D400. The laptop has no cd drive, and we don't have one of the standard dell external cd-roms you could buy with the D400. I started by trying a thumb drive boot. I made the bootable thumb drive with USB multiboot, verified the installation on another computer and then set the D400 to boot off USB storage device - I get a disk read error.

Then I tried using my external cd-rom drive, via usb connection. This time I get a missing NTLDR. Note: I also get another insteresting situation with the external cdrom drive. When I hook the drive up to other computers, it works fine. When I hook it up to the D400 and insert a disc, you hear it ramp up the disc, then power down, then repeat the cycle.

Any ideas????

Thanks.