weaselman :
That would be true to a point, Ratedk.
But by the time it gets to windows is starting and loads into windows nothing would work right as the chipset, of the other board would be detected and some of the drivers would be installed for them.
Windows has to be installed on the current device to avoid driver problems, or confict may arise.Putting you back to square one. Freezing or a black screen.
Once XP has transferred information from the disc to the HDD, it doesn't start loading hardware specific drivers (i.e. chipset, video, etc..) until after the install process requires its first reboot (and the disc is removed). At that point, you can transplant the HDD to another machine and safely finish the XP installation.
Back in the day when the everybody realized they didn't want Vista and rolled back to XP, I kept transplant-able HDDs, just like I described, handy just to speed up the install.
If you let it go all the way though to the final 'windows is starting' step in the first machine then your right, it wouldn't work without some major surgery.
I don't think Necrasyn can access safe mode if the install isn't completing that final step.