XP Installation goes …….bdgW#@%$&^7

Am trying to install XP Pro on a 40Gb HDD (New system Intel M/B)
{manged to install it only after I have installed Win98/2- which has been formated over now, as I want a clean installation}
XP didn’t autorun for me so I used fdisk & created a 40 GB partition (although I want 2 or 3 partitions in total -I understand I can do it later from within XP
Anyone with paitiance to explain me simply:
1:Do I partition the drive with fdisk in the begining & do I create all of my neccacery partitions now?
2. How to get XP Pro to start its setup????
I Want to run it with FAT32
Cheers