OK

I disconected old drive (it was on its last legs) and did an install over the top of the winnt on new drive wich took me back to SP3 then did the SP4 install and all is ok.

But this does not explain the strange software engineering of MS why swap files around on diferent drives? if you going to take the slave drive as 'C' then stay with it why take some from here and some from there.

I wish I could abandon MS totally and use the nice clean linux installations I have become used to

Thanks to all