Boot up files

[John John (MVP)]

You are saying that you can mark a second partition active from within
Windows?

I never heard that one before

Yes, absolutely. As you already pointed out, there can only be one
active partition on the hard disk but if there are more than one primary
partition any of them could be flagged as active and the Active flag can
be changed with the built-in Windows Disk Management tool. Of course,
if you move the active flag from the current active partition without
taking appropriate measures your Windows installation will not boot, a
Windows 98 boot diskette and the fdisk utility will then be very handy.

John

 

[philo]

Yes, absolutely. As you already pointed out, there can only be one
active partition on the hard disk but if there are more than one primary
partition any of them could be flagged as active and the Active flag can
be changed with the built-in Windows Disk Management tool. Of course,
if you move the active flag from the current active partition without
taking appropriate measures your Windows installation will not boot, a
Windows 98 boot diskette and the fdisk utility will then be very handy.

John

Ok

thanks for the info...
that is one experiment I have never tried!

 

[John John (MVP)]

Ok

thanks for the info...
that is one experiment I have never tried!

Easy enough to try ;-) Have your tested & working XP boot floppy ready
or the W9x fdisk utility handy...or both to be sure!

John

 

[philo]

Easy enough to try ;-) Have your tested & working XP boot floppy ready
or the W9x fdisk utility handy...or both to be sure!

John

OK

I booted up my XP machine...it has two HD's in it

From disk management, though I can designate the second primary partition as
active...

The "boot" drive is designated as "system"
and there is no way to unmark it as such.

And now I see (not that it matters)

There is no way for me to un-designate the 2nd drive as active.

 

[John John (MVP)]

OK

I booted up my XP machine...it has two HD's in it

From disk management, though I can designate the second primary partition as
active...

The "boot" drive is designated as "system"
and there is no way to unmark it as such.

And now I see (not that it matters)

There is no way for me to un-designate the 2nd drive as active.

You can't "Unmark" an active partition. If the disk has two or more
primary partitions simply right click on one of the non-active
partitions and the option to Mark it as active will be available, when
you mark it active the flag will automatically be removed from the
previously active partition.

John

 

[philo]

You can't "Unmark" an active partition. If the disk has two or more
primary partitions simply right click on one of the non-active
partitions and the option to Mark it as active will be available, when
you mark it active the flag will automatically be removed from the
previously active partition.

John

Well I don't have any single HD with two primary partitions on it
so will have to experiment later

It just started snowing here so maybe I will do it today <G>


thanks

 

[philo]

You can't "Unmark" an active partition. If the disk has two or more
primary partitions simply right click on one of the non-active
partitions and the option to Mark it as active will be available, when
you mark it active the flag will automatically be removed from the
previously active partition.

John

Well I just created a 2nd primary partition
(with PM)

and gave it a try from within disk management...

and it worked just like you said...

of course I changed it back so I'd be able to bootup the machine.

It was just an extra cloned drive...so I was not too worried about ruining
anything

So I actually learned something today <G>


Hey...it stopped snowing too!!!