ACTIVE DISK SELECTION?

kapoios

Member
Hello and sorry for my poor English. I want to ask a question. I have partitioned my hard disk to four partitions. Every partition has it's own operating system. I used easybcd to boot in these os's with no problem.The only thing is, that every time i get on an os that's different than the one that i used easy bcd, it says that the disk is not active.The active disk remains always the same (the first one). I want to ask you if i have the possibility whenever i choose os or disk , this disk will be the active one.
Thank you very much.
 
You don't say what OSs you have.
If they are all Windows versions then the installations will all have added their boot information to the first installed system. (because it was "active")
That is normal MS architecture.
Disk Management flags have the following meanings


"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD".

Don't go changing the "active" flag, unless you know what you are doing and why. It is the flag used by the MBR to locate the boot files, and if you point it somewhere else, nothing will boot.
 
First i want to thank you for your quick responses. I have 4 os's installed (2 windows 7, 1 vista,1 xp,).I have set it up this way that a previous boot manager i was using (ranish partition manager),asked me from what disk i wanted to start and this disk started with its own os and this disk was active. I seek for you help because i am trying to create another logical partition (the 4 partitions i was talking about are primary) that ranish can't manage.That's why i started using easybcd.
 
You can install Windows on a logical drive, but its boot files will still automatically be placed in the "active" primary partition.
None of that is a problem for EasyBCD. It will also find the BCD by looking in the "active" partition and from there it locates all of the OSs.
 
Ok. Thank you very much for your help. One last thing. Is there a possibility for easybcd on the startup of the computer to let me choose whatever partition i want and this partition would be the active one?
Thanks again
 
Yes, with NeoGrub.

But it's not supported out of the box. You'll have to manually create the configuration file.
 
Back
Top