I have divided my harddisk into four partitions: 3 primary and 1 logical
drives.
I am unable to mark any of the primary partition as active using Disk
Management found in Computer Management as the option is greyed out.
I also have Norton Partition Magic 8.0 installed in my PC.

Can somebody advise why?

There can only be 1 active partition per hard disk. You already have an
active partition (the System Partition) and Disk Management will not
allow you to remove the active flag from the System Partition, it it did
then your computer would not boot the next time you restarted it... or
at least it wouldn't boot to the expected Windows installation. Why are
you trying to change the active status of the partitions?

John

wkg wrote:
> I have divided my harddisk into four partitions: 3 primary and 1 logical
> drives.
> I am unable to mark any of the primary partition as active using Disk
> Management found in Computer Management as the option is greyed out.
> I also have Norton Partition Magic 8.0 installed in my PC.
>
> Can somebody advise why?

You can have many "active partitions on the hd" ,youre problem on not being
able to set as "active",they are in a raw state,format them,then set as
active.

"wkg" wrote:

> I have divided my harddisk into four partitions: 3 primary and 1 logical
> drives.
> I am unable to mark any of the primary partition as active using Disk
> Management found in Computer Management as the option is greyed out.
> I also have Norton Partition Magic 8.0 installed in my PC.
>
> Can somebody advise why?

You can only have one active partition per disk. You can toggle the
active flag from one partition to another but you cannot have more than
one active partition on an MBR disk.

John

Andrew E. wrote:

> You can have many "active partitions on the hd" ,youre problem on not being
> able to set as "active",they are in a raw state,format them,then set as
> active.
>
> "wkg" wrote:
>
>
>>I have divided my harddisk into four partitions: 3 primary and 1 logical
>>drives.
>>I am unable to mark any of the primary partition as active using Disk
>>Management found in Computer Management as the option is greyed out.
>>I also have Norton Partition Magic 8.0 installed in my PC.
>>
>>Can somebody advise why?

I have installed Windows XP and Windows Vista on the 3 partitions and need to
switch between them. I have no problem switching for the 2 Windows XP
partitions using Partition Magic 8.0 but not Windows Vista as it does not
support the software.
Hence I want to use the built-in disk manager in Windows.


"John John" wrote:

> There can only be 1 active partition per hard disk. You already have an
> active partition (the System Partition) and Disk Management will not
> allow you to remove the active flag from the System Partition, it it did
> then your computer would not boot the next time you restarted it... or
> at least it wouldn't boot to the expected Windows installation. Why are
> you trying to change the active status of the partitions?
>
> John
>
> wkg wrote:
> > I have divided my harddisk into four partitions: 3 primary and 1 logical
> > drives.
> > I am unable to mark any of the primary partition as active using Disk
> > Management found in Computer Management as the option is greyed out.
> > I also have Norton Partition Magic 8.0 installed in my PC.
> >
> > Can somebody advise why?
>
>

The Vista Boot Loader can boot Windows XP. Give this a try, it makes it
easier to work with the boot loader: http://www.vistabootpro.org/

BootIt NG can boot all Windows versions:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

In my other post I stated that the Disk Manager would not allow changing
the active partition flag, that is incorrect. The Disk Manager allows
toggling of the active partition, I'm not sure why you can't do it,
maybe Partition Magic has something to do with it.

John

wkg wrote:

> I have installed Windows XP and Windows Vista on the 3 partitions and need to
> switch between them. I have no problem switching for the 2 Windows XP
> partitions using Partition Magic 8.0 but not Windows Vista as it does not
> support the software.
> Hence I want to use the built-in disk manager in Windows.
>
>
> "John John" wrote:
>
>
>>There can only be 1 active partition per hard disk. You already have an
>>active partition (the System Partition) and Disk Management will not
>>allow you to remove the active flag from the System Partition, it it did
>>then your computer would not boot the next time you restarted it... or
>>at least it wouldn't boot to the expected Windows installation. Why are
>>you trying to change the active status of the partitions?
>>
>>John
>>
>>wkg wrote:
>>
>>>I have divided my harddisk into four partitions: 3 primary and 1 logical
>>>drives.
>>>I am unable to mark any of the primary partition as active using Disk
>>>Management found in Computer Management as the option is greyed out.
>>>I also have Norton Partition Magic 8.0 installed in my PC.
>>>
>>>Can somebody advise why?
>>
>>