Active Partition when booting

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I am using Windows XP. WHen I turn on the computer, it states that they is no active partition. I want to create a particition. How do I do that? I went into Setup but I was unable to locate anything there. Thanks!!

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Did you change anything on the PC such as add a new disk drive? Any other changes?

Joe

--Joe

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From account with Administrator rights, click Start | Run, type
diskmgmt.msc
and hit Enter. Disk Management console will open. On the lower pane select your boot partition (usually C ), right-click it and from pop-up menu choose “Mark partition as active”. If partition was marked as active already, this option will be greyed out.

But if you are doing fresh install of Windows XP (it is not clear from your post), after booting up from Installation CD, delete all existing partitions and then create new ones or simply install WinXP on the unpartitioned space. Windows will create a partition and set it active automatically.

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That would work if I could log into the computer. When I turn it on, it states “No Active Partition” and it stays that way. I am not allowed to log in.
Someone may have taken the harddrive out and put a new one in, I am not sure.

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Your post is a bit vague. If you already have installed XP, and are just now getting this error, you probably did some damage to your Master Boot Record. To fix it, boot from a Windows 98 boot floppy diskette (get one here ), and use the undocumented /mbr switch with the FDISK command. At the A:> prompt, just type: FDISK /mbr . This should work whether your disk is formatted with FAT32 or NTFS. If you have not yet installed Windows, you can create a new partition by either typing FDISK (without the mbr switch) at the A:> prompt, and choosing to create a Primary DOS partition, OR you can boot from the Windows CD, and create a partition by following the prompts. The following article may be of help. Partitioning with XP

Edited to add: If you run the FDISK command, then choose option 4, you should be able to see whether or not you have a partition already defined. If you do, you just need to use the /mbr switch as above to set that partition active.

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