Greg,
I am attaching a pic. This is how I did it when I installed win7 and I chose the C drive which now shows as partition 1.
When I did it, that partition had 16 GB space and it went about doing its installation.
Why I don't want to lose data is because I have so many programs I use and I will spend several hours installing them again.
If you can confirm there is no way by which I can change the display time during boot up ( so that it gives me 30 seconds to choose an OS) without actually booting up the OS in a machine then I will just format partition drive 1 and do a fresh install of win7..
Then where was XP? If you had an XP system as you say then XP is always on the first partition.
When you finished installing WIn7 did it show a Dual Boot menu with an XP listing that actually booted? WHich partition was XP on? Surely you would know this.
If Win7 is on the first partition and Startup Repair will not repair it when run 3 separate times with the Active flag we know from Diskpart is in place there, then I would reinstall Win7 to the first partition, explore the other partitions to find out where the XP partition is, if it's the second partition move the data you want off of it and delete it in Disk Mgmt to extend C into it as I've laid out three times now.
You can also browse in now with the WIn7 disk to see the files on each partition to determine which is Win7 and XP, and even rescue your data to another HD or external using Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console
The only way I know to undo the changes you made is System Restore. Try an earlier Restore Point.
Greg,
I cannot confirm if the old XP sp2 was working because ever since I installed win7 I have never touched win xp2
But what I can confirm is that C drive had a windows.old folder and there was no change in the disk space of other drives. Each one has hardly 5-8 GB and there was no change in disk size.
There are two restore points. One that is installation and one that says system updates. I tried both and they do restore but Everytime at startup it still tries to do the sp3 installation and fails and goes into its endless loop..
Do you have access to another PC where you can create a bootable DVD ?
I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better for the OP to boot a Linux disc to see what is on all the HD partitions ???
Hi David, unfortunately its the only machine I have.
I would not waste any more time with a dead OS that's XPired anyway. Reinstall Win7 to the first partition, delete XP partition after moving its data off, then resize Win7 into the space. Even if XP is on third or fourth partition you can move the data off, delete it in Disk Mgmt and then annex the space into the WIn7 partition using extend partition easily with Partition Wizard - video help.
In fact you can borrow space from any other partition using that cool tool. I would equalize my partitions so you have one OS and one data.
OK, but do you have any friends with PCs that would let you create a bootable disc ?
Greg, So for my clean install in partition 1, I do a format of the partition right.
I attached an image with the list of partitions and advanced options below. Do I select partition1 and click format?
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