vcomm won't let me...

The problem is simple VCOMM (I believe it's a vxd in 98) refuses to let me boot into Windows with more than four partitions (number of physical disks is irrelevant)... then tells me to reboot.  I have an external drive connected via firewire (four partition) which results in a total of eight partitions, but this all occurs in the later stages of the boot sequence.  Likewise none of the restrictions seem to apply if I boot into Safe Mode.

I should mention that I change the number of partitions on my HD using Partition Commander, but the same limit hit me when I tried to install a second internal HD so I had to take it back.

What the hell do I do?