Uninstall Vista (Native OS), but leave Windows 7 (Secondary OS)

Hello cdmoomaw, welcome to Seven Forums!



Before we make any specific recommendations will you please post a snip/screen-shot of the entire disk management drive map with a full description as to which drive/partition is which, so we can see what you have going on as there may be a fairly simple way to resolve the situation.

In the Windows start menu right click computer and click manage, in the left pane of the "Computer Management" window that opens click disk management and post a maximized snip of that.


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Since you have installed Win 7 on a separate drive, all you have to do is remove the dual boot option (msconfig) Boot Tab in Win 7. You can then physically remove the Vista drive or reformat it (or whatever you want to do with it). I did that on my PC, I had Vista on one hard drive, I installed Windows 7 on a new (separate) hard drive. When I wanted to remove Vista I did exactly what I've stated.

Click the start button and then enter msconfig and press the enter key. The System Configuration Panel will come up and click on the "Boot" Tab. Highlight the Vista entry and then click the Delete key.

fireberd said:

Since you have installed Win 7 on a separate drive, all you have to do is remove the dual boot option (msconfig) Boot Tab in Win 7. You can then physically remove the Vista drive or reformat it (or whatever you want to do with it).

Click the start button and then enter msconfig and press the enter key. The System Configuration Panel will come up and click on the "Boot" Tab. Highlight the Vista entry and then click the Delete key.

This probably won't work as I'm sure the "System" boot files are on the Vista partition and will have to be recreated to the Windows 7 partition or the new Windows 7 System Reserved partition if it is present on the Windows 7 HDD.

What I stated worked for my system. The dual boot option was in Windows 7

If it's a desktop.

First in Windows 7 disk management mark the Windows 7 partition as Active, then power down the PC and disconnect the Vista HDD and connect the Windows 7 HDD to the #1 SATA port of the motherboard and set it as the second boot device in the BIOS after the CD/DVD drive.

Then run the 3 separate startup repairs outlined in the main body of this tutorial at the link below to recreate the "System" boot files to the Windows 7 partition.

Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times


Then this method clean all (#7) can be used to wipe the Vista HDD if needed from within Windows 7.

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command


Then have a look at Option One in this tutorial for additional storage options.

Partition / Extended : Logical Drives