Hey catkin
Well, why not use Plop Bootmanager, the executable, not the install-to-MBR one
I include iin all my live stuff
its like 2kb!
anyway, it can boot hdd, usb,cdroms,usb-cdroms,etc on pc's with or without BIOS support for usb,etc
Heres one I use-
http://multidistro.com/downloads/plpbt
So, it can boot the windows hdd from a usb no issue
it can also, on most, boot the usb its on too
very simple too and its somewhat configurable
so, say you had your windows netbook, a fat32/ext2/ext3 usb
and the usb has maybe the whole slack tree, or DVD iso, etc
just make a syslinux.cfg or grub menu.lst or grub2(did you know grub2 can run from fat32 usb?)
and the syslinux.cfg,menu.lst,etc would have plop and slack and whatever entries also
thats actually how I install slack from a DVD on hdd partition
I put the slack kernel(hugesmp.s) , initrd.img and plop on the usb
with a syslinux.cfg
the slack dvd is on hdd partition
my PC doesn't boot from usb
so, I have a grub2 menu entry for plop too
I boot the usb, then boot slack kernel
make 2 mountpoints
mkdir /source
mkdir /iso
then I mount my hdd partition where the dvd is
mount /dev/sda2 /source
then mount the dvd
mount -o loop /source/slack-dvd.iso /iso
then I enter "setup"
and when it gets to where medium is I say premounted directory
and enter
/iso/slackware
anyway, point is Plop plpbt can boot almost anything
But, maybe there are other solutions too?
EDIT: unconfigured, Plop can only "see" the first 4 hdd partitions
as I said it is somewhat configureable and doesn't need to install anywhere