Change Active Partition Disk 0

[beachdogvet]

On my computers' Disk 0 I have two main partitions. The computer is "Dual Boot".

Partition A - Windows 2003 server OS (System, Active, Primary Partition)
Partition B - Windows 7 OS (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

I want to lose Partition A (Windows 2003 OS) and use if for something else or just simply reclaim the drive space. However I can't because ( as I understand it) it's the "Active Partition"

I did a some research and I've read I can change the Active Partition using "Disk Management". When I right click on the Windows 7 partition I see the option "Mark Partition as Active". And I searched in this forum and found a post with answers that seemingly confirms what I want to do.

However....I'm a little reluctant to do this. Is it as simple as that? I have this nagging feeling something might go wrong or..whatever...and then make the computer completely un-bootable having to reformat every blasted thing and completely lose my Widows 7 environment.

 

[boybrm]

Yes it is right.
Just go on computer management and click on "Mark partition as Active"
And done.

nothing to worry about

 

[beachdogvet]

Well...according to this gentleman, it's not that cut and dry. Check out his answer...

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/95a0cae3-5c0d-4397-a6fe-e951fa3bb3db


Hello,

It's not that simple.

The bootloader and BCD file\folder exist on Partition A as well. The BCD file contains the path to \Windows as well as path to booting Windows Server 2003. Partition A also contains the bootloader for Windows Server 2003.

After making Partition B Active, you would need to copy over the Bootloader and folder containing all the BCD entries.

You then may also need to run a repair on the system by booting to WinRE

 

[Pyree]

I am quite sure the Window repair will detect your installation of Window 7 on partition B and fix up the boot.