Changing Active Partition Can Make Your System Unbootable

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional

SYMPTOMS

When you use the Windows 2000 Disk Management snap-in tool to mark your primary partition as active, the computer may not start up if the partition marked as active does not contain the Windows 2000 boot files (or boot files for another OS).

CAUSE

This problem occurs because on Intel-based computers, the system partition must be a primary partition that has been marked as active for startup purposes. This partition must be located on the disk that the computer gains access to when starting up the computer. There can be only one active system partition at a time. If you want to use another operating system, you must first mark its system partition as active before restarting the computer.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, perform one of the following:

• It may be possible to change the active partition by booting to a floppy disk and using disk utilities to manually change the active partition.


-or-


• If enough free disk space is available, Windows 2000 could be installed to a parallel directory. After the parallel installation is complete, the Disk Management snap-in can be used to change the active partition.
  
  The names commonly used for partitions containing the startup and operating system files are system and boot partitions, respectively.

Additional query words:

Keywords :
Version : WINDOWS:2000
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbprb