Even though your knowledge is WAY beyond mine, I pretty much understand what you are saying about the differences in the way Win 7 and XP setup and that installing the additional XP system on the HDD might just screw up things so I have NO functional computer. As for answering your specific questions, let me give it a shot. 1) What do you see right now at that step? Not 100% sure what you are referring to here, but if it is what I see during my attempted install to the W thing, setup will run until it reaches the point where it asks WHERE to install the program and shows all the items described previously, except the W thing, so I am unable to go further. (I need to understand what is the situation now, before suggesting you how to go on). 2) Can you (if needed) re-create the .iso (with or without nlite)? Yes, I could recreate the iso file again using nLite. It is looking more like what I really need to do is buy an old laptop and use it to run my old inventory program. When I bought this laptop I specifically bought with a version of Windows 7 that would run the XP virtual machine. My program runs, up to a point, in the virtual machine, but is essentially useless. 3) Do you have a PE of some kind (please describe) or the Windows 7 install DVD. I do not know what a PE, is but yes, I do have a copy of the original DVD setup for the copy of Wiindows 7 installed on the laptop. Again, appreciate you time and help! oldtiger64