So, after my glorious x64 Vista install on my 2.16 Ghz Macbook (successful I might add), I ran into a small problem. I need an 32 bit XP box for my school applications this semester... so it's back to XP. I've run into a few problems this evening though, and thought I would share for those of you who might be going through something similar in the near future:

1st: Make your partition big enough. When I installed Vista x64, I found out very quickly that 30GB isn't anywhere near enough. I installed most of the Vista compenents, Office, Visual Studio, and BAM! 4GB free... Not so good...

2nd: Backup your OS X partition just in case... (I have a Time Machine now, so this one is covered.)

3rd: Have a good 3 to 8 hours ready in the event something goes wrong.

4th: (This one happened tonight, which prompted this post!) After booting into your installation disk, don't take it upon yourself to delete the FAT32 partition Bootcamp creates and create your own NTFS partition. This screws the boot file, and causes a nasty Black screen before you could even possibly get to the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death for you n3wbs).

Basically, by manipulating the partitions outside of OS X, your boot file gets jacked, and ultimately, the Windows Installer thinks your hal.dll file is corrupt.

Instead of the above method of creating an NTFS file system, select the FAT32 partition, and then in the next screen, tell it to reformat. This should resolve the afformentioned error.

5th: Don't give up. I started this installation at around 6PM, and it's now 11PM... (currently formatting for the 3rd time)

Oh the things I have to go through for my classes...