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#11
@aardvarkNow, for the record, I have two drives with active partitions as well but one is an external drive. I also have a different partition structure as shown below:
FYI, you don't have 2 drives with active partitions.
If you install Windows with GPT partition scheme. Your Boot partition is 100MB EFI System formatted as FAT32, where your BCD (Boot Configuration Data) resides in. There's no such thing as Active partition with GPT disk. EFI firmware looks for the EFI System to boot from.
Active partition can only be marked as Active if your disk is initialized with MBR. With GPT disk, if you try to mark "Active" on any partition with diskpart, you would get an error.
Having said that. Your Windows was installed using GPT partition scheme, your Z drive is a MBR disk and if it is a data disk then it should not be marked as "Active". However, If your Z drive contains another OS and is MBR then it must be marked as Active in order to boot from.
Here's an example, Windows 10 was installed on Disk 0 with GPT scheme. Windows 7 was installed on disk 1 with MBR so it must be marked as Active on the System Reserved partition. This configuration is not dual boot. In order to boot Windows 7, I must change the boot order in the BIOS or use the Boot Menu for one time boot. Hope this helps !!!
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