Well, to the most important thing first:
It worked with the LiveCD gparted-livecd-0.3.1-1!
I took some time to test it, since I had to create the product recovery media first and then back up everything...
The procedure that workes for me was:
1) Defragment c: and run chkdsk on c:
2) Shutdown XP and enter BIOS Setup (press <F1> during boot screen)
3) Change Config->SATA from AHCI to Compatible
4) Save and exit BIOS, press <F12> to get a list of boot devices, boot from CD
5) Use the standard setup from the Live CD, no special modules needed
6) The disk will show up as /dev/sdax
7) You will find 2 primary partitions, one big ("IBM_PRELOAD") with the XP and one ~8GB (ups, fogotten the name) with the recovery system at the end.
8) Resize the XP partition to the size you really need, this will leave a lot of space between the two primary partitions.
9) Exit the LiveCD, press <F1> to enter BIOS and change SATA setting back to AHCI
10) Boot XP. XP will run chkdsk on c: and reboot
11) Create the other partitions you need, either with gparted, or if you just need NTFS/FAT32 partitions you can use diskmgmt.msc and thus save changing the BIOS again.
Regard,
dupre1967