Vista partition is not a system partition

I've got a really weird scenario:
I've installed Vista on one of my partitions, after a few days it got
corrupted, so i've installed another version on a different partition
(different disk as well). I've since deleted the first vista
installation.
Now vista works perfectly on my other partition, no problems. However,
when looking at the disk management I can see that the old vista
partition's status is:" Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)"
whereas my working vista partition is: "Healthy (Boot, Page File,
Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)"
My vista partition is not a system partition. This causes some
problems, as I can't format the old vista partition.
Trying to disable the disk at startup and booting with the Vista DVD
doesn't help (it recognizes some problem but when rebooting, nothing
happens, no loading of anything).
Is there a way to assign the 'System' attribute to another partition
and/or to remove the 'System' attribute from a partition?

It is a result of the way you installed Vista.

The "default" (for want of a beter title) way of installation is to have
system files and boot files on separate partitions/drive - however they can
be both installed on the same partition which is the majority of "home"
installations

If you delete or remove the "old" drive Vista will not boot - no system
files available.

You may be able to use bcdedit or a third party boot manager such as
VistaBootPro for correction.


<weinnir@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6458574d-81a5-4724-a498-b112ac920781@e4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
> I've got a really weird scenario:
> I've installed Vista on one of my partitions, after a few days it got
> corrupted, so i've installed another version on a different partition
> (different disk as well). I've since deleted the first vista
> installation.
> Now vista works perfectly on my other partition, no problems. However,
> when looking at the disk management I can see that the old vista
> partition's status is:" Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)"
> whereas my working vista partition is: "Healthy (Boot, Page File,
> Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)"
> My vista partition is not a system partition. This causes some
> problems, as I can't format the old vista partition.
> Trying to disable the disk at startup and booting with the Vista DVD
> doesn't help (it recognizes some problem but when rebooting, nothing
> happens, no loading of anything).
> Is there a way to assign the 'System' attribute to another partition
> and/or to remove the 'System' attribute from a partition?

On Jan 26, 11:39 am, "AJR" <ajr...@comcast.net> wrote:
> It is a result of the way you installed Vista.
>
> The "default" (for want of a beter title) way of installation is to have
> system files and boot files on separate partitions/drive - however they can
> be both installed on the same partition which is the majority of "home"
> installations
>
> If you delete or remove the "old" drive Vista will not boot - no system
> files available.
>
> You may be able to use bcdedit or a third party boot manager such as
> VistaBootPro for correction.
>
> <wein...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:6458574d-81a5-4724-a498-b112ac920781@e4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
>
> > I've got a really weird scenario:
> > I've installed Vista on one of my partitions, after a few days it got
> > corrupted, so i've installed another version on a different partition
> > (different disk as well). I've since deleted the first vista
> > installation.
> > Now vista works perfectly on my other partition, no problems. However,
> > when looking at the disk management I can see that the old vista
> > partition's status is:" Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)"
> > whereas my working vista partition is: "Healthy (Boot, Page File,
> > Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)"
> > My vista partition is not a system partition. This causes some
> > problems, as I can't format the old vista partition.
> > Trying to disable the disk at startup and booting with the Vista DVD
> > doesn't help (it recognizes some problem but when rebooting, nothing
> > happens, no loading of anything).
> > Is there a way to assign the 'System' attribute to another partition
> > and/or to remove the 'System' attribute from a partition?

Thanks AJR, however I don't really understand one thing - my system
files and system root are all in the new partition, all I have in the
old partition is roughly 13MB containing the boot folder, of which I
have the same in the new partition. I don't have any other system
files, of in fact other files on the older partition.
I've tried VistaBootPro, but there's nothing I can do there to help me
resolve the problem. All it says is that the boot manager is in the
old partition, and the rest is in the new one.

Hello,
The terminology can be confusing at times.
System means the volume that contains the bootmgr and the \boot folder.
This has to be the Active Primary Partition. There should only be one
active partition in your system.
The Boot Partition is the partition that contains \Windows. It may be same
as the "system" partition, and it may be active and it may be Primary, but
it doesn't have to be Active, Primary, or a System partition.

|>old vista partition's status is:" Healthy (System, Active, Primary
Partition)"
So in this case this partition is listed as Active and Primary, plus there
are boot files on it, so it's listed as "System"
I suspect this is the first one that is enumerated.
|> my working vista partition is: "Healthy (Boot, Page File, Active, Crash
Dump, Primary Partition)"
This is also listed as Active, which it shouldn't be,
So it's hard to say which one you are truely booting from.

you can run diskpart to change the status from Active to Inactive which
affect what is shown, but if any of the boot code resides on the old Vista
Volume you may not boot again.
You would then have to repair by booting to the DVD and choosing the repair
option. That may also require you to run diskpart and reset the correct
volume as active again.

Thanks,
Darrell Gorter[MSFT]

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
--------------------
|> From: Nir <weinnir@gmail.com>
|> Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup
|> Subject: Re: Vista partition is not a system partition
|> Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:07:50 -0800 (PST)
|> Organization: http://groups.google.com
|> Lines: 44
|> Message-ID:
<7076810c-f183-4f08-a72b-4a14faa997ca@f47g2000hsd.googlegroups.com>
|> References:
<6458574d-81a5-4724-a498-b112ac920781@e4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
|> <emd5jMFYIHA.1212@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl>
|> NNTP-Posting-Host: 66.183.96.100
|> Mime-Version: 1.0
|> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
|> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
|> X-Trace: posting.google.com 1201381671 6824 127.0.0.1 (26 Jan 2008
21:07:51 GMT)
|> X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
|> NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2008 21:07:51 +0000 (UTC)
|> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com
|> Injection-Info: f47g2000hsd.googlegroups.com;
posting-host=66.183.96.100;
|> posting-account=jckLkwoAAABu5pdE9Wk05SyuAEzO5R5q
|> User-Agent: G2/1.0
|> X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.11)
|> Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe)
|> Path:
TK2MSFTNGHUB02.phx.gbl!TK2MSFTNGP01.phx.gbl!TK2MSF TFEEDS02.phx.gbl!newsfeed0
0.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.glorb.com!postnews.google.com!f47g2 000hsd
.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
|> Xref: TK2MSFTNGHUB02.phx.gbl
microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup: 33678
|> X-Tomcat-NG: microsoft.public.windows.vista.installation_setup
|>
|> On Jan 26, 11:39 am, "AJR" <ajr...@comcast.net> wrote:
|> > It is a result of the way you installed Vista.
|> >
|> > The "default" (for want of a beter title) way of installation is to
have
|> > system files and boot files on separate partitions/drive - however
they can
|> > be both installed on the same partition which is the majority of
"home"
|> > installations
|> >
|> > If you delete or remove the "old" drive Vista will not boot - no system
|> > files available.
|> >
|> > You may be able to use bcdedit or a third party boot manager such as
|> > VistaBootPro for correction.
|> >
|> > <wein...@gmail.com> wrote in message
|> >
|> >
news:6458574d-81a5-4724-a498-b112ac920781@e4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
|> >
|> > > I've got a really weird scenario:
|> > > I've installed Vista on one of my partitions, after a few days it got
|> > > corrupted, so i've installed another version on a different partition
|> > > (different disk as well). I've since deleted the first vista
|> > > installation.
|> > > Now vista works perfectly on my other partition, no problems.
However,
|> > > when looking at the disk management I can see that the old vista
|> > > partition's status is:" Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)"
|> > > whereas my working vista partition is: "Healthy (Boot, Page File,
|> > > Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)"
|> > > My vista partition is not a system partition. This causes some
|> > > problems, as I can't format the old vista partition.
|> > > Trying to disable the disk at startup and booting with the Vista DVD
|> > > doesn't help (it recognizes some problem but when rebooting, nothing
|> > > happens, no loading of anything).
|> > > Is there a way to assign the 'System' attribute to another partition
|> > > and/or to remove the 'System' attribute from a partition?
|>
|> Thanks AJR, however I don't really understand one thing - my system
|> files and system root are all in the new partition, all I have in the
|> old partition is roughly 13MB containing the boot folder, of which I
|> have the same in the new partition. I don't have any other system
|> files, of in fact other files on the older partition.
|> I've tried VistaBootPro, but there's nothing I can do there to help me
|> resolve the problem. All it says is that the boot manager is in the
|> old partition, and the rest is in the new one.
|>

On Sat, 26 Jan 2008 10:18:46 -0800 (PST), weinnir@gmail.com wrote:

>I've got a really weird scenario:
>I've installed Vista on one of my partitions, after a few days it got
>corrupted, so i've installed another version on a different partition
>(different disk as well). I've since deleted the first vista
>installation.
>Now vista works perfectly on my other partition, no problems. However,
>when looking at the disk management I can see that the old vista
>partition's status is:" Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)"
>whereas my working vista partition is: "Healthy (Boot, Page File,
>Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)"

If you want the new Vista Boot partition to also be the System
partition, you have to make it active, which is already is, and you
have to set your motherboard Bios to boot from the disk drive
containing that partition. Then boot from the Vista DVD and run
repair. Boot from the Vista DVD again, run repair again, and repair
startup. You should now be able to boot to Vista from the new drive.

>My vista partition is not a system partition. This causes some
>problems, as I can't format the old vista partition.
>Trying to disable the disk at startup and booting with the Vista DVD
>doesn't help (it recognizes some problem but when rebooting, nothing
>happens, no loading of anything).
>Is there a way to assign the 'System' attribute to another partition
>and/or to remove the 'System' attribute from a partition?

[c. david young]

The simple solution I found to this problem was to disconnect all drives except the one that you want to boot from, which also has Vista installed. Then I had to boot from the Vista CD twice and run repair to get Vista to recognize that there was no boot sector and write a new one. After booting a couple of times without the CD just to make sure that everything was working, I reconnected the other drives. Now the older drive is no longer identified as a boot drive in the Disk Management. It is still marked as active so now I need to investigate how to make it just Primary Partition without being active.