Activation partition

Here is my problem. I have a computer that got a virus and I had to replace the HD. The computer came with an 80 GB HD in SATA 0. I had installed a 500 GB HD on SATA 1 to increase my memory.

The 80 GB drive was the boot drive. When the virus got past my AV I had to replace the HD. I had an IDE 120 GB HD from a computer that was no longer working and since my present computer supports both IDE and SATA I installed the 120 GB drive as the boot drive until I could get another SATA drive.

I got another SATA drive, cloned the IDE drive with DriveImage XML, and tried to activiate the partition of the new SATA drive to use it as the boot drive.

But when I opened Disk Management and right clicked on the new SATA drive the "Mark partition as active" option was greyed out and I cannot find a way to activiate the partition on the new SATA drive to use it as the boot[system]drive.

If remove the 120 GB IDE drive the computer won't boot. With the 120 GB IDE drive in the computer I can't activate the partition on the new SATA drive.

Can anyone tell me how to activate the partition on the new SATA drive so I can use it as the boot[system]drive for the computer.

The computer is running XP Pro, SP3.

Thanks.

So you think you need a new hard drive just because you got a virus? 95 percent of infections can be removed easily. Can you boot into windows that has the virus?

johnb35 said:

So you think you need a new hard drive just because you got a virus? 95 percent of infections can be removed easily. Can you boot into windows that has the virus?

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The HD completely stopped working. After the virus I repaired the OS with my XP install disk. It worked for a couple of days and then would not boot. I tried to repair it again and nothing I did would get the HD to work.

A repair install won't clean out the infections you have. Most likely you have a mbr bootkit infection. You would have to totally format the drive and reinstall windows fresh. Can you access the drive by slaving it to another system? If so, back up your data and reinstall windows after formatting the drive.

kemperhills said:

The HD completely stopped working. After the virus I repaired the OS with my XP install disk. It worked for a couple of days and then would not boot. I tried to repair it again and nothing I did would get the HD to work.

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No can do. As I stated after the first repair where the computer was working fine, the HD stopped working.

That is the reason that I replaced it, it stopped working. Maybe it was a co-incidence that the virus got past my AV and then the HD just went bad, but bad it is.

Thanks.