Help please - I don't know which partition to set as active

I was attempting to format a usb which Windows set as active the moment I plugged it in. I'll be the first to admit I messed up here - I thought it was inactive, but after ejecting the USB, none of the partitions on my computer are active (unless disk management is hiding it from me lol) and I cannot, for the life of me remember what the active partition was.

I'm terrified to reboot atm - I think it's the 100MB partition on Disk 1 that should be active because it's the EFI System, but I'm doubting myself too much to be sure. Does anyone have any idea? Cheers.

Don't think it's relevant to this question? But I'm on Windows ver 1909.

Lions said:

... I thought it was inactive, but after ejecting the USB, none of the partitions on my computer are active ... I cannot, for the life of me remember what the active partition was.

Welcome to Ten Forums.

Relax, your system is perfectly normal. A UEFI/GPT system doesn't use the 'Active' marker on any of its partitions. The UEFI bios will always boot the EFI System Partition. Here's my UEFI system - look, no 'active' partition....



Active partitions are only used when booting in Legacy BIOS mode from an MBR formatted drive. A Legacy BIOS has to be told which partition to boot from, the UEFI BIOS always boots from the EFI bootloader partition, which in turn loads the Windows system from the partition that the BCD table tells it to use.

Bree said:

Relax, your system is perfectly normal. A UEFI/GPT system doesn't use the 'Active' marker on any of its partitions. The UEFI bios will always boot the EFI System Partition. Here's my UEFI system....

Thank you so much! I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how I'd messed it up since I was struggling to find anything online, glad to know I was only overreacting hahah

Lions said:

Thank you so much! I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out how I'd messed it up since I was struggling to find anything online, glad to know I was only overreacting hahah

You hadn't messed up, in fact you hadn't done anything to your system. Glad I could put your mind to rest.