Thanks so much, Mark.

Booting off the xp cd,  with only the xp HDD connected, repaired the boot sector

and, now with both win 8 and xp HDD’S all well, and 8 partitions detected by system.

foolish of me not to have thought of it before!



regards,

Venkat

                          PCSOFT's List Owners:
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                        Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>