Windows 7: Need help removing dual boot

I am presently dual booting Windows 7 and XP and would like to remove XP. The two OS's are on different hard drives, Win 7 Home Premium x64 is on an SSD and XP Pro SP3 is on a mechanical HD. I added the SSD and Windows 7 upgrade to an existing PC with a mechanical HD and haven't used XP since the upgrade and now I want to clear that HD and use it for storage, backups, little used items, etc...

The tutorials about removing dual boot talk about needing to have bootmgr on the correct drive, both of mine show active and I can't be sure which one holds the Windows 7 bootmgr, I would like to end up with only Windows 7 booting off the SSD. I've attached a disk management screen shot.



Steve

Unplug XP HD, set Windows 7 HD first HD to boot in BIOS setup (after DVD drive), boot Windows 7 DVD System Recovery Options or System Repair Disk to run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times
until Windows 7 starts on its own and holds the System Active flags on its partition.

You can now plug back in the XP HD to access it's data, boot it using the one-time BIOS Boot Menu key,or wipe it using Diskpart Clean Command to get it cleanest for repartitioning in Disk mgmt. Partition or Volume - Create New

I made a little guide for the purpose: Dual Boot - Delete a OS

I have read the tutorials, they seem to be for different partitions on a single drive, nothing about two physically separate drives. It's the same, but different. I can't extend or shrink them. When I'm done I want one 64G SSD with Win 7 OS on it, and one empty 120G HDD.

I have two hard drives "C" (SSD with Win 7), "D" (HDD with XP) both drives show "active", XP was there first on the mechanical HD, I added an SSD and installed Win 7 (retail) Home Premium upgrade on the SSD. It saw XP on the HDD and installed itself on the SSD and I ended up with a dual boot system. Now I want to remove XP from the dual boot, format the entire mechanical HD and have it for storage.

Since I can't be sure which drive has bootmgr, I will follow instructions to remove the mechanical HD. Then use the install CD to run repair install 3 times or until Win 7 boots on it's own.

Steve

The steps I gave you work for partitions on separate HD's as well as on same HD.

This method also assures the System Recovery Options are written to the F8 Advanced Boot Options so you can run Repairs without using the disk.

Thanks for the replies and advice, I will do it tomorrow and report back when I'm done.

The Windows 7 partition has always been "active" the XP partition is also "active", that's what's confusing (senior moment ).

Disconnect the XP disk and try to boot Windows 7. Then you will know whether the Windows 7 BCD is on the XP disk or not.

I just disconnected the XP HD and the computer booted into Win 7 so the bootmgr is on the SSD.

Thanks much to all who replied, I haven't removed the dual boot yet but since it boots Win 7 from the SSD I can clean the HD and that should take care of it.


Steve

Since SSD has the System Active flags it is good to boot on its own.