Windows 7: Won't let me delete my old partition.

I'm not sure if this thread belongs here or not, but I'm having an issue that is driving me nuts.

I have 2 hard drives, a 200 gig 7200rpm and a 35 gig 10000rpm. The 200 gig is split into two partitions. 150 gig and 50 gig. Originally, I had the Vista Upgrade installed over XP on the 50 gig and all my media and junk on the 150 gig partition. A few choice programs were installed on the 10K.

I decided I wanted the Windows 7 Upgrade to be installed on the 10K from now on so that things move a bit faster, boot times and whatnot. So I did and now I have the 150 gig partition free and wiped, but the 50 gig partition with my old Vista won't wipe, format or delete whatsoever, and it won't let me boot from any of the discs so I can just delete and wipe everything and start over.

It feels like a jumbled mess and I just want to get it all right. How on earth can I delete, format or completely wipe my 50 gig partition so I can delete that partition and make it whole with the other 150 gigs and just have all of Windows installed on my 10K?

I tried changing my boot order in the bios and it just tells me to insert the system disc. It won't recognize it and let me delete the partitions manually. I am really aggravated about this and could really use the help.



Thank you.

-Avey

Check in Disk Management, is the 50GB partition marked "Active'?

If it is, that's the partition with the Boot Manager. If you delete that partition you won't be able to boot anything.

Do you have the dual boot menu when you start the computer?

Is Windows 7 set as default OS?

If yes to the above two questions, follow this tutorial to remove Vista from the Boot Menu.

How to Delete a Listed Operating System at Boot in Windows 7

You should now be able to format or delete the 50GB partition.

I do have the dual boot menu at start up, but how do I tell if Windows 7 is the default OS?

Post a screenshot of disk management. A few commands will probably sort this out for ya. We have to see that first, though.

Use Easybcd to edit the default OS.

Ok so I'm guessing you want to format D:?

D: is my 10K that Windows 7 is already on. It's been formatted. It's C: that won't format or delete. I want to free all of that up and make it apart of the other 150GBs.

Yeah, I figured all that since C: is where I had Windows XP and Vista installed previously. The plan now is to have the entire 200GB drive free and clean completely and have everything Windows related on D:, the 10K. Was wondering what I need to do to make that happen.

First make sure you can see hidden and protected files.

Copy bootmgr file from C: to D:
Copy boot folder from C: to D: ignoring the warning that it can't copy bcd or bcd.log. Tell it to skip them.

Then run this command from an elevated command prompt (you may copy from here and paste):

bcdedit /export D:\boot\bcd

If that went well (you can look at the folder in windows explorer to see bcd in there now), reboot into bios and make D: the default boot device.

Boot to Windows now and check that D shows as the system drive in disk management. If so, done. You may format C: or do whatever you like to it.

Where is the bootmgr file? Windows search brought up a lot of hits. Pull it from where in C: and put it where in D:?