BB FANS

I'm trying to get my XP PC to dual boot with an external USB Hard-drive with Mandriva One installed.
I have Grub installed and accessed via Boot.ini rather then MBR but Grub doesn't recognise any of the USB drives.

Now the motherboard doesn't have the boot from USB option but it does have some USB drivers for Keyboards and Mice.

I did read that it might be that Grub could still access the Drives is the Bios had the drivers but when I checked in it's console it didn't find the drives but didn't give an error code using the Root command.
But when trying to boot from Drive 8 (hdd7,0) it does report drive not found.
I check in XP Pro's admin tools to check which drive number it was.

Is there anything else other than using a liveCD to run it on this machine. I do have an option of taking the SATA drive out of it's case and fitting it internally but I'd rather not do to the heat level that already exists with the 3 internal drives etc.

Grub2 does mention future support for USB and does have a work-a-round which involves compiling a new version which I would have a glue how to do.

I do have another PC (duel 3.6GHz XEON 800MHz FSB) on it's way which will run this permanently along with a mail program ,a weather station program and SETI. It will retire my old Athlon 1GHz which I already have a buyer lined up for.

Apologies for the Geek speak for the majority of the users on here.