Got a new Tosh laptop this week and realised that XP wasn't up to running stuff like SQL Server 2000, and needed Win2K server.

Most companies don't supply installation disks, only OS recovery disks, so installing them in the order MS recommends is no good, because you won't be able to 'install' the newer OS.

Installing an older version of Windows usually doesn't work initially, especially the NT based OS versions, since the ntldr and ntdetect.com only recognise older versions of Windows.

The tip is to overwrite the ntldr and ntdetect.com files in the root of the boot partition with the versions from the latest installation on the machine.