Got it. Jesus, was that ever frustrating. And to think that I have told people that it should be relatively simple to set up an XP/Vista dual boot. You got it bang on: the number of the partition was one higher than I thought it was (3 vs 2). Also, I had initially replaced my hal.dll file with hal.dl_ from the Windows XP CD - I thought this would guarantee me an uncorrupted version of the file, but after trying partition 2, 3 and 4 to no avail, I decided to go back to my old hal.dll (partition 3 gave me a hal.dll error), which fixed the problem. Just thought I would explain the solution for your personal databank. Thanks for your assistance.