From: John Beckett 

I'm with Geo on this one!

While everything Rich has said is (naturally!) correct, what about the
issues raised by Geo:
1. Is there a way to mark a partition active with native tools when the OS
is not running  (e.g. recovery console)? 2. If not, there should be.

In my case, I needed to use W2k to mark a partitiion active when it
wouldn't boot. I was amazed that I could not find a way to do it. I have
used diskpart in the recovery console - great tool (however, some articles
say NOT to use it if you have dynamic disks).

But diskpart has no way (I think) to mark a partition active.

John

"Rich"  wrote in message news::
>    I suspect the problem of a virus that writes to this portion of the =
> disk to be less onerous than the problem of a virus that wipes the boot =
> sector or deletes other required files like the kernel or hal all of =
> which require the same access rights.
>
>    Of course that is not the statement you made for which I called you a =
> putz.  Your statement was in regard to the effect of someone booting =
> their system from a floppy with MS-DOS, running FDISK, marking as active =
> some partition other than the existing active one, assume of course that =
> they have multiple such partitions, and then rebooting.  The effect is =
> that they may have rendered the system unbootable and they should boot =
> from the same floppy they used when they reconfigured their computer and =
> set it back to the way it was.
>
>    Your "new computer" scenario is a bit silly with the new computer =
> having its hard disk removed and replaced.  This is no longer a new =
> computer with Windows XP scenario.  It's not even a clean install =
> WIndows on to a new computer.  What you scenario is is one where someone =
> copies the contents of a hard drive from one computer to another but =
> does so incorrectly, possibly even an innocent mistake, and =
> misconfigures the new drive he is playing with to be unbootable.  I =
> don't know about you but what I would do once I recognized my own =
> mistake is to fix it and not blame others for my error.
>
>    By command line or console I meant a normal command window.  Not the =
> recovery console.  There is a DISKPART command in the recovery console =
> but it is something else.
>
> Rich

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