I finally managed to boot XPPro Unattended from External memory without wiping any partitions. It works great if you install it the right way on your external memory…
First of all you don’t need an USB stick. I used a 2GB Sandisk MicroSD Card fitted in a Sandisk MobileMate MicroSD Reader which you can find here.
Card must be no greater then 2GB.
There’s a program to help you install it, follow all instructions and your fine. It’s called USB_MultiBoot_10. You can find a link to the program on this page. It contains all info you need and some links to other tutorials and faqs.
Preparation:
Change to boot order in the NC-10 bios to boot from USB first.
USB device no greater then 2GB with decent speed.
Copy all content from XPPro installation disc to a folder on your drive. I used an image of XPPro SP3 unattended and mounted that in DaemonTools.
Do not use spaces in foldernames, create folder on C: and start USB_Multiboot from C:.
You have to reformat your usb device, there’s a program in the USB_Multiboot package for that.
Once again everything is explained on the site i linked to earlier (it can be slow) and the program takes you to the install step by step.