Making Bootable XP Disk

I've searched, read, attempted, failed and started over too many times to count but always end up w/ "NTLDR not found". I have a Z61t that was originally Vista Basic upgraded by Lenovo to Premium then clean installed only to after months of a love/hate relationship w/ Vista ponied up for the Lenovo upgrade discs for XP Pro. Ideally I will try a dual boot as I have a Vista disc created from the Digital River files but first would like to Clean Install XP. Following the guide generously laid out by Arkit3kt and howtohaven, thanks to both parties, I always get the "Cannot Find NTLDR" msg. I have done the procedure numerous times and triple checked that I was following the instructions to the letter, as well as read numerous posts and articles regarding the problem but no joy!

I also have an XP Pro disc that came w/ my old Dell which when I boot w/ that in the tray does allow me to boot from the CD so I assume that it isn't hardware related. One thing that I am about to try is deleting the hidden partition to see if perhaps the Boot.ini file is pointing to that partition instead of the C Drive.

Anyone able to give me some guidance?

TIA

 

Did you prioritize your PC to boot from CD-ROM?

 

Yes, and it works fine w/ the Dell XP disk.