WinXp on External HD with MBP C2D and rEfit

[RKnight]

I'll try to make this short... I've been in the process of installing WinXP onto an external USB drive to be used on my MBP C2D without installing ANYTHING on my OSX internal drive or partitioning. I've come a long way with tools from some very slick, resourceful people on the net and my own personal obsession with this. :(;)

This is where I am right now:
- I've made a USB installable WinXP disk with this guide (http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176)!

- I did install Boot Camp 1.1.2 to burn my driver disk, thats all.

- I've boot to the XP disc then been able to begin the first phase of installation of XP, but when I reboot I am unable to boot to the windows drive to continue installation. Hitting Option -- or Cmd-Option-Shift-Delete doesn't work, also going into the OSX's Startup Disk option in System prefs. and selected the Windows drive doesn't work, it just sits there on the reboot.

- So I came across rEFIt (http://refit.sourceforge.net/) - great tool, I decided to install it to a spare USB thumb drive (a suggestion from the site). rEFIt comes up, I select the windows USB drive, the gray windows logo appears then...
I get this error

Booting Legacy OS

Starting legacy loader
Using load options 'USB'
Error: Not Found returned from legacy loader
Error: Not Found from LocateDevicePath
[......above error 13 more times.....]
Error: Load Error while (re)opening our installation volume (Tried rEFIt on a cd and that got rid of this error)

I know it could be that fact that I'm on an external drive... or it could be that Im running from the thumb drive, but I feel it has to do with the MBP C2D firmware. I've read people with other models have gotten this to work and other people with this model have reported similar problems, plus the firmware was an issue with the MacPros for a while... So... any suggestions? I fear that an update to rEFIt is whats needed here, but I could be wrong.
Firmware Info for my MBP C2D
Boot ROM Version: MBP22.00A5.B01
SMC Version : 1.12f5

(the latest as of this post on 02/17/2006)
Any help would greatly appreciated, like many, I've lost lots of sleep over this! ;)
THANKS!

[RKnight]

Interestingly enough, I decided to connect the windows drive though firewire to test an idea I had. And it turns out I was correct, rEFIt had no problem again seeing the Windows drive (now on firewire) and when I chose it, it started to load windows, but then I was at a DOS screen telling me it could not find a bootable drive.

Now that is because its on firewire, and Windows can not boot to firewire, but what that told me is that the drive started to boot, meaning rEFIt did its job. So this just confirms what we already know, that this issue is related to USB, firmware on the MBP C2D and rEFIt. But at least it lessens the chances its something else.

Just thought I’d share my findings.