Cannot figure out Xp On MBA using bootcamp

I was a die hard microsoft fan for years, at least since windows 95 when I was a kid. Then Apple (the enemy) came out with a machine as beautiful, compact, stylish, and practical as the Macbook Air I couldnt resist any more. Since last week I've made a full conversion to mac OSX even though I planned on installing windows and not using mac OS. Well now I need windows back again for a college class where I need to run MS Access. I use bootcamp and make a partition, 6gb, should be plenty for windows XP and just MS access installed out of MS Office with a little bit left over. So After the partition is created I go to the installation option, then here is where everything goes wrong... The computer chills for a few seconds, the external optical drive starts to hum and then the computer restarts itself. I figured this might be part of the process, but there's no way it can be. After that the computer starts as normal until the screen where the apple pops up. Then it starts flashing the apple logo, a folder with a question mark, and a do not enter (not sure what to call it. It's a circle with a line drawn through it) and it just repeats that until I turn it off via the power button. I thought to maybe let it go and its installing or copying files with out telling me, but nope, after 20 minutes still the same thing, repeatedly flashing those visuals at me one after the other. I'm using a full working bootable copy of Windows XP home with SP2 Incorporated. What is the problem here? I've tried deleting the partition and re-trying bootcamp assistant over and over to no avail. Can anyone please help me? A project is due on Thursday afternoon in access and both of my windows PC's are not working right now.

The only thing I can come up with is that I may need a super drive. Which would be really annoying. Why buy a sub-par optical drive just to install windows via bootcamp. I don't know a single other person with an Air or let alone a super drive. If I remember correctly the external super drive for the MBA can't burn... Why would they leave this slightly important option out of the super drive if it costs 100$?? I could see if it came free with the MBA, but I figured my external DVD/CD-RW drive would work just fine, and it does, except I cannot get windows to install to save my life.

Its supposed to restart, thats when it loads the XP installer. I couldn't get XP to work on mine either, but afterall, I did try to use my own slipstreamed disc which might have been to problem. I went with vista. Access doesn't come with MS Office for the Mac?

Try holding down C when it restarts, that will force it to boot from the CD which is what you want it do if you have successfully created the Windows partition.

For some reason I remember having trouble with external drives in the past on my iBook G4. The combo drive was bad so I had to use an external drive, and it wouldn't work as long as the machine didn't have an OS loaded it seemed. Maybe Apple does that to make you buy their Superdrive.....

I tried holding in the option key when it restarted right away and it brought me to Mac HD with the HD image, and it also had the disc image for XP. I clicked on the xp disc image and it started doing its error thing, the question mark folder and the do not proceed image and the apple logo alternating... I am using a slip streamed copy of XP home with sp2, i also tried a copy of XP pro sp2, all i have left is Media center, and thats 2 discs... And I don't really want to use media center, I want my Win XP! Access doesnt come with office mac. Not sure why, but our professor told us at the start of class you cant use access in mac OS. Any other thoughts before I have to go buy a super drive and return it??

You need to have the Windows XP SP2 CD in the optical drive. On the Air I believe it will only boot from the $100 Super Drive from Apple! I could be wrong but see no other way around it.