Windows Vista how to unmark a parition as active?

hello all,

i dont know if i somehow i did this but my secondary drive D drive got marked as active. is this okay? does it affect anything? like lets say i have to reinstall my OS.

also i got some unallocated space (54GB) on my primary drive that to extend to my C drive but the option is grey out.

thanks in advance for any help,

 

An active partition contains the loader for OS. Only one partition can be marked as active at a time irrespective of the no.of
partitions available.

You think that you have somehow managed to mark D: as active partition, but I think that it was marked as active partition in first place when your OS was loaded as changing of active partition results in computer not being able to boot after you have installed the OS.

More info http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/Mark-a-partition-as-active

 

i'm a little confused, i install Vista Home Premium last nite with my primary hard drive 500GB it label Windows Vista and is the C drive, did u look at the picture i posted.

the second drive is the D drive and it is also marked as active but i only connected it after i install Vista all drivers and updates.

 

well that site you posted it explain it... you can have two physical hard drives with both listed as active.

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You cannot make a logical drive or an extended partition active. Only a primary partition can be made active.
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There can be only one active partition per physical hard disk.
*

If you have multiple hard disks installed on your computer, it is possible for each hard disk to have a partition set as active. However, the active partition on the first hard disk that your computer's basic input/output system (BIOS) detects is the one that will start the computer. For more in-depth information, go to the Microsoft website for IT professionals.



how about...also i got some unallocated space (54GB) on my primary drive that to extend to my C drive but the option is grey out.???

 

also why is there so much spam for this forum?

 

The unallocated space was also there all the time but you have noticed it now only. I think your computer has not been setup properly.

There are utilities available that can expand the partitions, but playing with partitions is only for brave hearted as a single mistake can make all your data disappear. I would suggest that you backup & install the OS again.

 

i install vista last nite, that unallocated space i created when installing vista. i dont need it as a partition anymore so i delete the volume and wanted to add it back to C partition, there both on the same physical drive.

the drive in question was the only drive connected last time during installation, i created one partition 54GB thinking of having this a paging file partition or a TEMP directory partition. i decide to let things be and just leave the installation the way it was installed except by this point the partition in question was already created.

so after doing all my updates and drives i install the second physical hard drive which is 1TB and contains media. docs and pretty much everything of mine. this drive is OK to be marked as active according to what i just read.

i really dont want to reinstall, for just this.. installation i dont mind, but those UPDATES, plus i got original DVD of Vista without any of the service packs, so image. lol

 

Well one of the reason that you can't expand the volume may be that expansion of this partition would overwrite your boot record [remember this is your active partition]. You only have space in front of this partition not at the back [very loosely speaking]. If it would have been your first partition, the space would be at the end of it & it could have been done.

If you want second opinion, download & burn gparted from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php but note the warnings.

 

i tried using the gparted before i ask the question and it didnt work, about 25 mins ago i install partition wizard home edition (freeware) and used moved/resize feature to do what i ask asking. it had to restart and boot into some program and it moved everything perfectly. see image below, thanks again


http://h.imagehost.org/view/0755/Untitled2