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: Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]> Mark Rode<[log in to unmask]>