Marking the Appropriate Partition Active (Windows 7 / Vista)

writhziden · Sep 9, 2012

Mark the Appropriate Partition Active in Windows Vista or Windows 7:

In order for Startup Repair to repair the boot configuration properly, the correct partition must be marked active. The following steps will serve as a guide to mark the appropriate partition active:

First, you will need to access the Windows Recovery Options.
Once you have access to the Windows Recovery Options screen, choose the command prompt.

Setting the Partition Active for Windows Vista:

Start DiskPart.
List your hard disks.
Select the disk that Vista is installed on. In the below example, the disk number is 0. yours may be different and should be chosen based on which disk number Vista is installed on.
List the partitions of the selected hard disk.
Select the partition that Vista is installed on. You should be able to determine this based on the size of the partition. The partition number in the below example is 1. yours may be different and should be chosen based on which partition number Vista is installed on.
Mark that partition active.

Setting the Partition Active for Windows 7:

Do steps 1-4 as in Setting the Partition Active for Windows Vista.
Select the partition that Windows 7 has its boot information on. This is typically a partition with size 100-300 MB. It will not be the same drive that Windows 7 is installed on in most cases. In the below example, the partition number is 1. yours may be different and should be chosen based on which partition number 7 has its boot information on.
Mark that partition active.
If startup repair does not resolve the problem with the System Reserved Partition marked active, try marking the partition with Windows 7 installed on it as active. In the example image below, the partition Windows 7 is installed on is partition 2, and the boot / System Reserved partition is partition 1.