I know this isn't a normal use of Linux, but I need some help, so here goes.
I'm working on my mother's computer, a straight windows xp installation.
This computer contains two hard drives, an eight gig and a 40 gig. The eight gig is dying; sounds indicative of failure, and excess heat. What I want to do is repartition the 40 gig into two partitions (which I have done, have one that is slightly bigger than the 8 gig), image the 8 gig hard drive to the new partition and make it bootable.
I have attempted DDing the partition over, seems to be correct. How can I make it bootable?

Some specifics:
Used Norton's to defrag, then QTParted to repartition.
Swapped the master / slave settings on the hard drives, so the 40 gig is now hda.
QTParted has a ~30 gig partition in the front, and the eight gig in the back.
The computer's bios supports LBA, so it *should* be able to boot from this back partition, if the documentation I have read is correct.
When using dd, the exact line I used is: dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=/dev/hda2.

Thanks guys.

You could use fdisk to set that partition bootable I suppose. Let me know if that works for you if you decide to try it.

I thought that using "make active" under grub did that.. Which I've done.
Still doesn't work.
Thanks though.
Any other ideas?

post the O/P of

fdisk -l /dev/hda
and
fdisk -l /dev/hdb

regards

Did it not give you the option to make a bootable partition?
If not, I'd suggest you use cfdisk to remake the partition (it provides a nice screen with options listed at the bottom. use the arrow keys to select the options you want, such as 'bootable').
Using dd to copy the OS over can be dangerous. If you interrupt it, you can do irreversible damage to the OS (as in, make it non-bootable). My suggestion would be to investigate DAR. Use DAR to make a full backup of the partition you want to move, then restore it to the new partition.
DAR doesn't care about the size of the partition copied, or the size written to (unless it's too small). It takes some study to get the backup script configured correctly, but once it's done, WOW! It'll make compressed backups (each file individual; if one is hosed, the rest are still usable).
Testing, listing, restoring are all as easy as one command line. Dar even gives you the option to include a static version of itself in the backup, in case you should need it to restore your system.