Why must the primary partition on my hard drive be active?

One of the requirements for a formatted partition to boot and load your operating system is that the partition has to be active. To check whether the partition is active, or to activate the partition if it is not active, you need to run the FDISK command.

  1. Boot your system with a windows Startup diskette and type FDISK at the A:/ prompt.
  2. Press ENTER.
  3. If your partition is not active, , you will see a warning message at the main menu of FDISK stating “Warning - No active partitions set” at the bottom of the screen.
  4. To set the partition as active, select option 2 (Set Active Partition) and choose Partition 1 when prompted to select the partition.

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