HI Mark.Many thanks for your detailed reply. I did disconnect my seagate hddcontaining xp, prior to installing win8 in a new Toshiba hdd.After receipt of your reply I disconnected win8 Toshiba hdd and connectedmy seagate win xp and powered up.What's happening is that, the winxp loading bar flashes just a nano secondand the screen reverts back to-----boot in safe made,with network, with command prompt,last known good config, normal,  blah.blah blah and goes in a loop whatever I choose!!!!???I know seagate have a tool for checking the status of their hdd's but the problem ishow do I run it??    Try another m/c??
anyway tks a lot.
Venkat.
                                          
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