Change Active to Inactive Partition

[glamart]

I have a disk that has a partition marked active that should not be.
Is there anyway to mark a partition as Inactive, other than deleting
it, with Windows XP?
Thanks!

 

[Jon]

Start > run > diskmgmt.msc

Right-click on the partition you would like to be active > Mark Partition as
active

Jon

 

[glamart]

I need to mark a partition as INactive - How to do that?
--

 

[Jon]

The way I suggested works if you are simply switching partitions (marking
one as active, marks another as inactive).

If that's not the case, then one way is to boot to DOS and use a tool like
mbrtool.exe to edit the partition table directly (basically it's only one
byte within the partition table that determines whether a partition is
marked as active or not)

Typical partition table in the MBR (each row is for a different partition)

80 01 01 00 07 FE FF FF 3F 00 00 00 A3 21 F5 06
00 00 C1 FF 07 FE FF FF E2 21 F5 06 3B 8B 38 01
00 00 C1 FF 07 FE FF FF 1D AD 2D 08 3F 82 3E 00
00 00 C1 FF 07 FE FF FF 5C 2F 6C 08 69 B0 E5 00

The first byte (either 80 or 00) is the flag for active or inactive
80= active
00= inactive

You can use a tool like mbrtool to change the value of the first byte in the
row

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/mbrtool.htm

Jon

 

[Lil' Dave]

Couldn't find one that specifically marks an active parittion inactive
within the XP environment with no other changes, including diskpart. Shame
on MS.

If its FAT32, you may try fdisk from a boot diskette. 3rd party for NTFS,
like a current version of Paragon or Partition Magic.

 

[glamart]

Thanks will give the MBRtool a try.
--

The way I suggested works if you are simply switching partitions
(marking one as active, marks another as inactive).

If that's not the case, then one way is to boot to DOS and use a
tool like mbrtool.exe to edit the partition table directly
(basically it's only one byte within the partition table that
determines whether a partition is marked as active or not)

Typical partition table in the MBR (each row is for a different
partition)

80 01 01 00 07 FE FF FF 3F 00 00 00 A3 21 F5 06
00 00 C1 FF 07 FE FF FF E2 21 F5 06 3B 8B 38 01
00 00 C1 FF 07 FE FF FF 1D AD 2D 08 3F 82 3E 00
00 00 C1 FF 07 FE FF FF 5C 2F 6C 08 69 B0 E5 00

The first byte (either 80 or 00) is the flag for active or
inactive
80= active
00= inactive

You can use a tool like mbrtool to change the value of the first
byte in the row

http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/mbrtool.htm

Jon