Appreciate what you say about re-formatting, but as the problem is occuring when doing this, it is very pertinent to this thread, in fact, it is the crux.

OK - I have spent hours on this, and I...

Formatting does not help - this has something to do with AWD Bios not recognising discs over 33Gb when installing XP. Some other places suggest using Windows 98SE floppy to boot, but not tried that...

To think I had to register to see how you solved it.