PCA Forums

On my work computer, I have 2 HDDs. 1st HDD is split into two even partitions (XP Pro).

I notice that when I check disk management, it shows my HDDs as follows:

Drive C (Part 1) "Healthy - System"
Drive D (Part 2) " Healthy - Active"
Drive E "Healthy - Page File"

Now on my home computer that also has 2 HDDs (same combo as above), I have this:

Drive C (Part 1) "Healthy - System"
Drive E (Part 2) "Healthy"
Drive D "Healthy - Page File"


Notice on my home computer, there are no active drives at all but on the work computer, the 2nd partition of the 1st HDD is active.

Is something wrong here?

An "Active" partition is meaningless on a Win2K or XP system. A DOS partition must be active to be bootable. Win 2K/XP doesn't use DOS. The "System" partition is the boot partition in these operating systems.

On a system that had the hard drive partitioned and formatted by Win2K or XP there shouldn't even be an Active partition.

From what I understand, the "ACTIVE" partition is where the MBR resides and where the computer boots up from. The "system" partition are where the Windows 2000 specific files are located.
Not the normal, but if your dual booting another OS, sometimes it does it that way - same thing is you do a re-install of windows sometimes.

I have just one OS which is XP Pro and it's on the 1st partition (C:\). I just don't know how it got that way (the 2nd partition being active) and if it means something is wrong. Is it even possible to make it not active anymore? I tried reading about Active partitions in the Windows Help but didn't understand it too well (didn't understand about dynamic disks either).

I wouldn't worry about it. I suspect that drive wasn't partitioned by XP during it's install originally. Maybe you originally partitioned using FDISK or Partition Magic? Or was the drive used in a Win9x installation?

As I said, on a normal XP install there IS no active partition.