Making a drive partition inactive.

[QUOTH]

Hello, I've just reinstalled vista 32bit home premium and all my drives letters changed around. I formatted the C drive and reinstalled so vista is on C. No problems there.

I have accidentally made another partition [full of files] active. I need to change this drive's letter but when I try in the disk management snap in I get a message saying "You may not change the drive letter. This may be because it's a system or boot volume or has page files".

I'm assuming the problem is just that i accidentally clicked "make partition active" [it's 4am, i screwed up].

Is this the problem? If so how do i fix it? Thanks all.


And to make things clear this partition is full of files so I can't delete and remake it and I do NOT have an OS installed on here, NOR do I plan to install an OS on here. there are no programs installed on there.

 

[Thraxen]

Do you have any programs installed there (i.e. is there a "Program Files" directory)? AFAIK Windows won't allow you to change the drive letter if programs are installed there.

 

[QUOTH]

No, none

 

[RebateMonger]

Can you just use Disk Management to make the NEW C: drive Active? I get the impression that making one partition active in Vista will make the other one Inactive, since there's no "Make Inactive" choice ("Make Active" just greys out if a partition is already Active) and since you can only have one Active partition in the OS.

 

[QUOTH]

ha, that was easy. But it has not solved my problem. The problem partition is also listed as the "system" partition. How do I make C the system partition again?

Note: I have restarted the PC many times since making this mistake and it starts up fine, no problems there.

 

[RebateMonger]

I don't know if this article is 100% accurate, but may give you a starting place.

Determining if a drive is a System Drive.

"A drive is a system drive if it holds any of the following:

* A folder used by Windows such as "Windows", "Desktop", "My Documents", etc.
* The "Temp" and "Tmp" folders used by many programs as a temporary storage area. To display their location in Windows XP click Start, Control Panel, System, Advanced, Environment Variables.
* A cache folder used by Internet Explorer or other browsers. To display its location in Internet Explorer, click Tools, Internet Options, Settings (in Temporary Internet Files).
* A page file. In Windows XP click Start, Control Panel, System, Advanced (tab), Settings (in Performance), Advanced (tab), Change (in Virtual Memory)."

 

[QUOTH]

EDIT: I sort of found a solution.

I enabled see system files [control panel, folder options] and opened up the partition I'm having trouble with.

There I found a "hidden" folder called boot. It's the same as the one on C. Windows won't let me delete or move it. I believe this was accidentaly created when I made this partition active.

Even though I couldn't delete the contents the problem is now solved and the C partition is the system partition.

so yay, all fixed.