Must a partition be active?

[Guest]

Under Wxp, must a partition be "active" in order for it to boot?

 

[seth]

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/a/activepa.htm

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Under Wxp, must a partition be "active" in order for it to boot?

Yes. For all practical purposes, "active" means "bootable."

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Bruce Chambers

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[Timothy Daniels]

Yes. For all practical purposes, "active" means "bootable."

It depends on what the OP means by "boot".
The partition that contains the boot loader (ntldr) and the
menu file (boot.ini) and the hardware environment
detection routine (ntdetect.com) must be in a Primary
partition that is marked "active". But the partition that
contains the OS that is booted by ntldr can be in *any*
partition, "active" or not, even in a Logical Drive in an
Extended partition. Much confusion comes from people's
assumption that the partition that contains the boot manager
and the partition that contains the booted OS must be the
same partition - which is not true.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Guest]

Under Wxp, can more than one partition per physical hard drive be "active"?
____________________________________________________________

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Under Wxp, can more than one partition per physical hard drive be "active"?
____________________________________________________________

No.

--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Only one Primary partition on a HD should be marked "active", and
Disk Management will only mark one Primary partition "active".
When it marks a Primary partition "active", it will unmark the existing
"active" Primary partition. But I have seen an Extended partition
marked "active" by a 3rd party utility without any bad consequences.
The only significance of "active" is that the HD's Master Boot Record
will search the partition table at boot time, and it will pass control to the
boot sector on the Primary partition that it finds to be marked "active".
In that "active" Primary partition, the boot sector expects to find ntldr,
boot.ini, and ntdetect.com (the "boot files"). Once ntldr starts up, it
will load the OS from whatever file and from whatever partition in the
system that the selected entry in boot.ini indicates.

*TimDaniels*


"b11_" asked:

 

[Paul Knudsen]

Under Wxp, can more than one partition per physical hard drive be "active"?
____________________________________________________________

Not bootable partitions. But you can have an extended partition with
as many sub-partitions as you want. All multi-boots should be able to
see them.