You might want to try a utility called the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD, available at www.ultimatebootcd.com). It is a collection of floppy boot disk images and utilities that are run from a CD, so it is quite a bit faster than a standard floppy. There is a program win that image that will allow you to set any partition on your HD active (Ranish Partition Manager, which can be downloaded by itself, but i recomend the UBCD). Give that a try. If that doesn't work, wipe and reinstall my friend.