No active partition after deleting 2 OS?

Asked by Daethian (334

) August 6th, 2009

Oh yes I screwed up! I have XP pro sp3 installed on HD1 and wanted to test Win7 on HD2 so I set up a dual boot. Finished with Win7 I wanted to remove it. I simply reformatted the HD2 thinking that would wipe out Win7 and that would be that. WRONG

Win 7 still shows up in the boot list, not a big deal at this point just annoying.

The major problem is that my C drive partition is running out of space. When I attempt to resize my partitions with Partition Magic it tells me that there is no active partition. It will not allow me to set C as the active partition, it’s grayed out.

When I tried running fixboot it says there are errors. Fixmbr sounds like its going to destroy my partition tables.

The computer is working fine aside from screaming about lack of space for the OS.

Yes I can reinstall XP Pro but trying to avoid that if there is some easier, faster fix. pray

Observing members: 0

Composing members: 0

6 Answers

You might want to try a Gparted LiveCD It’s like partition magic but runs in linux. I had luck with it before when partition magic didn’t do the trick.

limeaide (1921

)“Great Answer” (0

) Flag as…

So, lemme make sure I understand.. you need to format the second hard drive and set it as an extended partition or you’re trying to expand the active partion without destroying the data on it… ?

Either way I’ve had success with the Acronis Disk Director Suite…

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/

As I recall I tried to use Partion Magic a long time ago and was just unhappy with the results.

Hope that helps…

thrice2k3 (309

)“Great Answer” (0

) Flag as…

No at this point the 2nd HD is irrelevant.

HD1 is two partitions: C with my OS and E with my data.

I need to set C as the active partition so that I can move space from E.

Daethian (334

)“Great Answer” (0

) Flag as…

@limeaide if it runs in Linux will it work on windows?

Daethian (334

)“Great Answer” (0

) Flag as…

@Daethian Yes, it works on Windows partitions fine that is what I used it for. The LiveCD boots into Linux to run the utility but it works on any type of disk partitions. Don’t want to tell you a bunch of stuff you already know. If you don’t know how to boot to a CD or…. let me know.

limeaide (1921

)“Great Answer” (0

) Flag as…

I gave in and just reformatted my hd and reinstalled XP. Not too bad since I had the spare hd to just move all my data over. Thanks for your help anyway. Never hurts to reformat every so often anyway.

Daethian (334

)“Great Answer” (0

) Flag as…