What does "active" mean on a HD partition?

mitso

Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I have a HD with 3 partitions.
The first partition has the bootable W2k which is working normally.
The second partition is blank, and W2k calls this partition the active partition
What really does the active partition mean?:confused:
 

Lord Evermore

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Well, normally the active partition is the one that is used to boot with. The BIOS gives control to the master boot record, which then starts up the software on the active partition. I suppose the MBR may simply be ignoring the active setting and booting to the Win2k partition automatically. Are you sure the second partition is blank? Or does it have a few of the boot files needed by Windows, like NTLDR and boot.ini (which would be hidden files)?
 

mitso

Member
Oct 9, 1999
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It's really blank. I "unhid" all my hidden files.
Is there a way in W2k to delete or move the "active" from one partition to another?
I can't find a way. It doesn't appear to affect anything - it just irks me.
 

PurePeon

Senior member
Jan 22, 2003
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You can use FDISK and chose the partition with the OS on it and change it to the active partition.

** I don't know if this will cause problems though better to get more thoughts **
 

BmXStuD

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2003
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who cares man if u remove the active and set it on other than u WONT be able to boot up. You will get a bsod blue screen. If its not broken dont fix it. If its stable dont make it unstable ty.
 

BmXStuD

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2003
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Originally posted by: PurePeon
You can use FDISK and chose the partition with the OS on it and change it to the active partition.

** I don't know if this will cause problems though better to get more thoughts **

yes it will i had another hdd also which said active it WAS my linux which i was dual booting i dont dual boot anymore. Well i set it to active and boom bsod! Just dont do it read below in my sig ;0
 

Afterhourz

Junior Member
Apr 11, 2001
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What you can do is change the active partition and then make sure your bootloader is correctly setup.
Change the partition that has your OS on it to active using fdisk or partition magic etc.

Now since you've changed your active partition to C: ( this is what I think you're trying to do), you may need to to change your boot.ini file. You can access this by typing-- edit c:\boot.ini --from the run command, or going into the control panel>system>advanced>startup&recovery>edit boot.ini in Windows XP.

Looks like this for NT, 2K, XP. Make sure the default=[points to the location of the operating system]
[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Looks like this in 95, or Win 98
[boot loader]
timeout=3
default=c:\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
c:\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 98"

If your C: partition is set to active and your bootloader looks like one of the above you should have no problems. Your other partition can be used for program files and one for data.