hi i can access xp, the external hard drive does not show up in my computer. I go to disk mangement and its in there but does only give the properties and help options. There is about 64gb of personal gear on there. It says the external drive has eisa configuration. The same as the factory recovery partition on the hard drive. I contacted the pc manufacturer and they said when i reinstalled xp the external drive was also re-configured because it was left connected. They said that the eisa partition cannot be accessed through xp, because it is being treated as a hidden system partition.