Well, I managed to partition the drive, but ******* vista wont let me install XP on the partition as it's:"an older version than what is on the computer". I changed the bios to boot from the cd, but to no avail.

Leadhead, I may be asking for help.

What I'll do though at the weekend also, depending on what you guys tell me here between now and the weekend, is do a continuity test on the cable, just to rule that out.

I bet there's one thing I'm missing somewhere, just one, and it's stopping the whole thing from working. that would be my luck.