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7986
September 7th, 2010 20:00
2 Active Partitions
Hello, I have a Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop with XP. At startup, after I log in my password I get a black screen with www.dell.com inside a blue streak that runs across the very top of the screen, below that reads '2 active partitions' with an blinking underscore below that. What does this mean and how can I correct it? I can't access anything beyond this except the BIOS or to run a diagnostic check which turns up nothing. Any help or guidance will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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makotaco
5 Posts
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September 8th, 2010 01:00
bump.
Oysterisk
116 Posts
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September 8th, 2010 04:00
That's an odd one. What it means is easy enough: your disk is split into several partitions (that's normal). They contain recovery info, system files, your data and so on. Each partition has it's own proprties which can vary. One of the properties is called "active" partition - indicates the partition from which to boot the OS. This is often used in multi-OS configurations where you can choose at boot time which OS to fire up. However, only one partition can be active at a time. That makes sense as otherwise your boot manager won't know which one to start.
And here is where it gets interesting. Apparently your disk got two active partitions and your system quite rightly complains. Apart from actual physical corruption of the media I can't think of a way that could happen (some hacking utility playing with raw physical disk sectors maybe? Doesn't sound too likely). Anyway, the only solution seems to be stand-alone disk partitioning. You could use one of the available programs like [stand-alone, bootable] Partition Magic or perhaps Windows installation from scratch can do it for you although I'm not certain if it can handle two active partitions. Never tried that one :emotion-6: Anyway, good luck...
makotaco
5 Posts
0
September 8th, 2010 20:00
Thank you first of all for responding. I have tried to do a system restore and for some reason it will not allow me to do so. As for using 3rd party software such as Partition Magic, how am I to utilize it when I'm not able to get online or beyond the '2 active partitions' screen. I am at a loss at how to gain entry to Safe Mode as a means to do this. What would be my next course of action? Would a simple hard drive swap be a cure to this? It's ok to lose what ever info and files on hard drive, just can't for some reason so far. Thanks again for the thoughts and advice and time spent reading and responding to my post.
Oysterisk
116 Posts
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September 8th, 2010 20:00
Yes, replacing hard drive should work. Other alternatives are low-level format or 3-rd party software which must be bootable, e.g. load from external drive on it's own, without Windows (even in safe mode). Format can also be done on another, working machine if you have access to any. This assumes however that the disk itself is workable (no physical damage or wear&tear to the media).
Since you don't care about the data loss it's probably best to just replace the hard drive (might even look for a bigger/better one while you are at it :-)).