Hello VYOAMA You are correct that the bootloader resides on  the active partition. Your next question how does it load windows? Instructions in the bootloader tell where windows is located on the disk and where to load it from. The old DOS directory is almost gone from the bootloader It uses and offset to find things on the drive.  Your next question about Dell setting Windows partition active? Yes and have on some systems and not on others. Your next question about doing it yourself and what you would not be able to access? One thing you could not access is recover to Factory. Once the connection between Recovery partition and windows partition is broken you can't use F8 to recover factory image. Your next question, Yes Dell setup the partition, but is a Microsoft Windows build and you can  create your Recovery partition, system partition, OS partition and set the up in several ways. Hope this answer some of your questions and always backup your computer before changing things. Tom
As far as I know the active partition is where the bootloader resides. So I have a few questions: How does the recovery partition load the Windows? Couldn't Dell set the Windows partition itself active? If I do it myself what would I not be able to access? Is this partition created specially by Dell or do I have this option with a non-OEM copy of Windows as well?
Why is Dell Recovery partition marked as the active partition?