BREAKTHROUGH!! made an OS CD, AND got it to INSTALL!!
 

Finally jumped the BIG HURDLE! In combination with this forum and others, and this website: http://www.easydesksoftware.com/recovery.htm , I managed to install Windows Millenium to my laptop, using a created OS CD (CDRW to be exact). There were a number of hurdles and problems, but I solved them, needed some luck too. Not only did I succeed in doing this, but I did it with MY OWN PARTITI0ONS already created, and formatted. My OS CD did not interfere (unlike recovery CD's), after all, how could it? There was just ONE FILE on it....Windows\Options\Cabs, albeit it, a big one, 150 megs, with over a 100 sub files, including the key one, setup.exe.
There WERE a number of TRICKS, more on those later, the point is, the stage is ALMOST set for DUAL BOOT now. Supposedly the secondary partition is now free and available to have other OS's installed on it, including windows, and/or linux.
By the way, although Windows ME was quite obliging about installing to the primary partition, it refuses to install to the secondary one as well....the so called extended partition, which is annoying, and the next hurdle, but not nearly as important, as what I have now accomplished.
This thread is made for several reasons, one is to thank aaa, Chinaman, Michaelk, Megamieusel, quatsch, and others who have been helping, or trying to help, as the case may be.
Another is because somebody may know the trick for not only installing to that secondary partition, but also, getting it to be the one to boot up. It may be just a matter of some more dos commands and syntax study. I conjectured that one simply reassigns it as the ACTIVE partiton, but that sounds too easy! (and also, didn't work, heh.)
Trying to keep this short, so I'll just close for now, by saying, I got through the previous nasty problem, by NOT having the computer boot from the CD, one has to have the drive letter correct, the file names correct on either side of the slashes, the slashes themselves right, and then, after running setup, one simply reassigns the hard drive as the main boot device! Its the startup floppy, and then the HD, never the CD! That's one of the many tricks in this.
Because of this breakthrough, this thread will supercede all the others I have made.

beginnerx

Congrats.
The older windows were always picky on partitons, I don't think it can install to a logical partition (without some special 3rd party booting software). Extended partitions are primary partitions that can hold up to 11 logical partitions (to get around the 4 primary partition limit).