can i grab a windows cd image and run it through the dos emulator to see if it installs?

I thought the same thing, please try it i will do it if i had usb keyboard, but i don't If u have success please post here, if not, post anyways (why not)

For all the trouble people have had with running windows on a xbox this seems to be a bit easy. Im not saying its not worth looking into but I would think it has been tryed before, also if it had worked im sure people would know about it.

Anyway give it a try and let us know.

You can't install Windows from a DOS emulator. DOS emulators don't provide accurate enough virtual hardware to support protected mode device drivers.

You can only install Windows in a PC emulator/virtualiser, like QEMU or VMWare.