my hard disk has 3 partitions, namely C, D and E. C is the primary partition and is active. The other two are logical drives in the extended partition. Can D or E be made active so that an OS could be installed on them? What I want to know is whether a logical drive in the extended partition be made active if there already is an active primary partition. i have another query. if there is already an active primary partition and a logical drive, can a second primary partition be created on the same hard disk? and if a hard disk can have 2 primary partitions, can both of them be active?

A computer can only have one active partition per disk. i_XpUser

Depends on OS. All versions of Windows can only be booted from a Primary partition. Linux can be booted from a logical drive within an extended partition. Therefore with Windows a logical drive cannot be made active. You can have up to four partition of any kind on a hard disk. That includes partitions for other OSs that windows will not recognise. Windows software will only allow you to create one primary partition per disk. Third party software will allow you create four primary partitions if required. You can only ever have one extended partition. Only one primary partition can be active at one time. However if you do have two primary partitions then both will be visible and usable. There was a time that only one primary partition was usable in Windows but that restriction has been removed. BTW, partitions have numbers, 0,1,2,3 etc. Drives have letters. Drive letters are allocated by Window and do not exist until the OS is booted. Drive and partitions my seem the same, but there is a difference. Drive letters related to certain partitions can change, especially when dealing with logical drives and removable drives. Partition numbers do not change unless you delete a partition. Appreciating the difference could save you a lot of headaches when it comes to manipulating partitions with something like Partition Manager. Stuart

Excellent post by Stuart (as usual). :-) Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

Pearls before swine though - I've yet to see any sort of feedback from this guy Maybe this time? Saying that XP is the most stable MS OS is like saying that asparagus is the most articulate vegetable

[All versions of Windows can only be booted from a Primary partition] You can , I'm doing it, booting Win98se with no problem on an extended partition. With that said one must use a boot manager that will do it (XOSL). It can not be installed on the extended partition but must be copyed from a primary partition C:. I DO NOT RECOMMEND it, you can not do a repair install and might have problems with scanreg /restore. One can also copy 98 from C: to a extended partition , install XP to C: (convert C: to NTFS) and use XP's boot loader with some additional steps. XOSL= http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm

>> I'm doing it, booting Win98se with no problem on an extended partition. >> You are still booting from a primary partition regardless of what kind of partition Windows resides on. It is all down to the boot manager which is part of the Master Boot Record. Third party boot managers replace the Windows Boot Manager which can only boot a primary partition. Unless you understand exactly what is going on it can cause all sort of problems. Stuart