Windows 7: Dual boot with XP that now doesnt provide option

From the start.

I created a separate partiton and installed Win 7 fine. It dual booted fine as well. I then renamed the old XP boot partition and this caused the PC to give NTLDR missing and wouldnt boot.

So I reinstalled Win 7 as a custom install and it all boots fine into Win 7 without providing me a dual boot option. I am not too concerned about this as eventually I was going to go completely over to Win 7 anyway

Question I have is
1) The old Win XP boot partition is viewable in explorer. Can I just reformat this and reclaim the space - I want to make sure that the PC is not looking for any files in that old partition
2) Can I delete the Windows.old folder as well

Thanks

Kwack

Thanks

Hi Kwak and welcome to the forums.. I'd have a look at Brinks tutorial on how to expand partitions before you do anything that may bork your system up.. Read about it -=> here

Once you are finished reinstalling, be sure to browse the windows.old folder for any files you may need, then you may delete it if you wish..

Windows.old folder can be deleted as long as you're satisfied that there's nothing you want in it. I'm pretty sure Disk Cleanup has an option for this when you run it. If not, you can delete from within explorer.

As for your first question, please post a screenshot of disk management so we know where your system partition resides.

Thanks for the link to Brink's tutorial on reclaiming the first partition for all these guys deciding to bail out on XP/Vista within a day or two! (It took us beta testers a little longer but we had 7bugs then!). What I wonder is if it actually moves the Windows 7 into the first partition's space like copying it and moving it over using Partition Wizard? Or does it matter?

The important thing is that the Active flag is passed to your new Windows 7 partition and then after XP deletion, startup repair is run from the booted Windows 7 installer to rewrite the boot.

I will post up a disk management screen shot when I get home. I would suspect that the win 7 partition which is C drive now will be the system drive as there is no dual boot option anymore

I will probably use a 3rd party partition manager as I am familiar with these
Cheers
Kwack

Here is an explanation of my hard disks

Hard drive 1
d: 1.local disk (150gb) Healthy active, primary - thsi is my old Win XP
e: games: healthy primary partition
c: Windows 7 - healthy (boot, page file, crash dump, logical)

I want to keep C and E but remove d and ad back into e.

The dual boot option does nto seem to exist anymore so just want to make sure I can reclaim the space and not have to re-install/repair Win 7

Is this possible looking at this using partition manager or such like

Thanks

Kwack

We need to know system partition. "Boot" partition actually in reality means Windows is there. "System" partition actually means bootmgr and boot folder are there.

Is D: your system partition?

Proceed like so, if so.

Ensure you can see all system and hidden files in explorer.

Copy bootmgr file from D:\ to C:\
Copy boot folder from D:\ to C:\ and ignore that it can not copy bcd and bcd.log. Tell it to skip them.

Run this command from elevated command prompt.

bcdedit /export C:\boot\bcd

Reboot into bios and make it so it has C: drive as the first boot device. Reboot into Windows 7.

Then check disk management that C is now your system partition. If so, format D. Add it to E.

Use Easybcd to remove the boot reference to old XP.

Kwack, here's another option to consider which has worked for me and others here.

Whichever option you choose, make an image of your HDD using Windows 7's Backup Imaging utility and save it externally. These operations can fail, but with the image you can restore your HDD in 15 minutes to try again.

If your Windows 7 partition C: is same/smaller size* as your D:XP then:

--use free Partition Wizard bootable disk to delete D:XP, mark C:Windows 7 active then copy it over to D: space. Cue up all of these steps before clicking Apply.

--boot into the Windows 7 installer's Repair console to run startup repair three times. It doesn't usually work in this case if it is offered up when you boot into the installer Repair console, but must be clicked from its link and sometimes more than once since there are multiple issues to fix.

--when booted into Windows 7, use Disk Management or PW to delete the original Windows 7 you copied from. This step was saved in case you needed to do the copy operation over.

*IF your Windows 7 partition is larger than the XP one, then you will need to shrink Windows 7 enough to fit in deleted XP space. Later you can move your data drive over to reclaim the copied/deleted Windows 7 space and expand your Windows 7 partition.

The Bootmgr file and folder is in teh C drive which is where the Windows 7 has been installed. I also checked in control panel, admin tool, system config and it says under boot tab

Windows 7 (C): is current OS

So using easus partitoon manager do you thin it will be ok to just reformat the old D drive with XP on it

Cheers

KWack

Easeus will work if it's not 64 bit. If so use Partition Wizard.

You can reformat D: but first consider moving Windows 7 into that unallocated space since first partition is faster read by the laser.