Dual Boot - Delete a OS

Thanks yep popups galore but bailed in time and mbam/ sas/ even mse blocked so it's all good,
Attachment 336709

You are quite welcome.

Hi folks!

Would appreciate some help with the following...been looking at this for a couple of days, and have not been able to get off the ground with it.

In the process of "downsizing", have a laptop and a desktop that I am giving to friends. Both machines have a Windows 7 and Vista dual boot.

On the laptop, Windows 7 was installed when purchased, and Vista was installed later by me.
After reading Brink's excellent tutorial Default Operating System - Change Default Boot OSused Option Four, EasyBCD, and did the following:

1, Pressed Edit Boot Menu, and selected Windows 7 as the default OS to start in the Windows Boot Manager.
2. Pressed Edit Boot Menu, selected Windows Vista, and deleted the menu entry for Vista, so it is no longer seen as a booting option.

However, to my understanding, deleting the Vista menu entry does not delete the operating system itself. To permanently remove Vista, will need to format its partition.

So, here I am in front of this excellent tutorial by whs, but, formatting the Vista partition seems more complicated to me than changing the default boot OS, and my level of confidence at this point is shot.
I would appreciate some expert eyes taking a look!

Disk Management shows C:\ as Active, and presumed it is the partition that contains the bootmgr since there are no other partitions tagged as Active. However, the following comment concerns me: "If Windows 7 was the first OS on the system, then your bootmgr resides most likely in a separate system partition which is usually small." since DM also shows a small Recovery Partition of 5.86 GB!



Question #1: Do I need to copy the Bootmgr file to C:\ using EasyBCD and this tutorial:
Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD

Question #2: Are there any other considerations I need to keep in mind here, like, Partition E:\, which EasyBCD shows as having Vista, is a Logical partition?

Thank you in advance for your help!!

Thanks Greg!! I appreciate your help on this.

Will read all the info on the links, try to apply it, and see what happens. Will post back.

I do have a question, in the first sentence you mention the boot flag. Please pardon my ignorance, but, I can't remember where to look for the boot flag. Is it determined by looking in the Status area of Partition C:\?

Have a great day!! :)

Thanks for the info, Greg!

Thought there was a column of its own titled "Flags" somewhere. Maybe it is on another program I've seen...

Your instructions went quite well. The new DM capture looks good (I hope)!








Next, on the Desktop, Windows Vista was installed by Compaq.
Windows 7 Ultimate was installed by me at a later time.

This is the info from EasyBCD:

There are a total of 2 entries listed in the bootloader.

Default: Windows 7
Timeout: 30 seconds
Boot Drive: D:\

Entry #1
Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

Entry #2
Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {28c60e58-ec36-11db-b670-001921dbe361}
Drive: D:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe

This is what DM shows:




If possible, would like to remove Vista, and just have Windows 7.
This one might not be as easy as the Laptop...

Thanks again for your help.

First move the Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Forums

Back up your files from C and D, and a Macrium Imaging backup if you don't think you could do without that Win7 install if something should go wrong.

Then boot the PW disk to Delete D:/COMPAQ, click OK, Apply.

Next rightclick on C to Resize, drag the left border all the way to the left end of the HD, Click OK, Apply

Now highlight the disk #, from PW Disk tab select Rebuild MBR, OK, Apply.

Reboot to see if Win7 will boot. If not it may be necessary to run a Startup Repair or two when resizing on the boot sector.

If you want the space you can also delete Recovery and Extend C to the right. But if you think you'd ever want to restore to factory condition you can also keep it since you can manually Boot Recovery Partition using EasyBCD .

Back up your files from C and D, and a Macrium Imaging


backup if you don't think you could do without that Windows 7
install if something should go wrong.

I think there is a Windows 7 CD around here, somewhere. If I find it, I'm not concerned...there are no files that are a must to keep.

Then boot the PW disk to Delete

What is PW? Partition Wizard?