Can't Set Active Partitions

[linuxonly]

After re-partitioning my hard disks then installing XP-just to be able to use Partition Expert as it's my favourite tool of this kind.
I then installed SuSE 9.1 plus Mandrake 10.

Suddenly,I find I cannot create anymore active partitions.I know it is possible,since on my old computer I was running XP,Slackware,Mandrake and Xandros OS 2 Business Edition.Then,I ran out of space on the small drive!

The new computer-an AMD 64- has a 160 GB SATA hard drive capacity.I was dreaming of all the GNU/Linux distributions I'd be able to install upon it,but,I'm stymied.

Would appreciate any insights.Thank you.

[linuxonly]

Um..don't worry.I just totally trashed my XP installation by installing Cusor XP.

I'll try a total reformat.After this I'll re-install the Disk Director Suite and start afresh.Perhaps it'd become corrupted somehow.

It's happened at a perfect time at least,since SuSe 9.2 has been released and the AMD 64 version of Mandrake 10.1 is not far off.Hence,I'd be re-formatting anyway.