> At start up is > there any way for me to force it back to booting from my 8.1 partition? How > about forcing it to start from the external HD? Either hold down 'c' to boot from the CD, or hold down (i'm serious here): Command-Option-Shift-Delete That will force it to boot from an 'external device' and IIRC it will keep trying until it boots successfully, rather than probe once and boot from the default. HTH. -Andy