Colin,

First this is a newsgroup supporting those running the Win Me operating
system rather than XP.

Secondly, if I understand your post correctly, what you are looking for
has nothing to do with NETBIOS or even the operating system you have
installed but rather the order in which your PC polls the various bootable
devices.  In other words you want your PC to boot from a CD rather than
using the installed operating system on your hard disk.  This is done by
altering the boot order in your PC's bios which has little or nothing to
do with netbios.

What you need to do is to set the boot order in the motherboard bios so as
to boot from your CD drive before attempting to boot from your hard disk.
Do this by rebooting your PC and immediately after starting and before you
see the POST (Power On Self Test screen) click the required key to enter
the bios.  The specific key sequence is dependent upon the BIOS vendor
and/or PC manufacturer. Some common combinations include ....
F1
F2
Del
or less often,
Ctrl + Alt + Esc
Ctrl + Alt + Ins