Getting rid of Vista

[barney]

Hello All

I have Vista (on a seperate hard drive) and Windows 7 (also on a seperate hard drive).
I have used msconfig to boot only into 7 and do not need the Vista operating system anymore (I have the disk so if I ever needed it again I can reinstall clean) Vista was the first operating system I installed and 7 the second.
In disk management 7 is the boot, pagefile, crash dump primary partition
Vista is system, active, primary.
It will not allow me to delete the volume which is my objective
How do I get rid of Vista Please?

Best

barney

 

[Captain Zero]

By making your Win7 drive the primary, you can then make the other physical drive logical so, for example, it can be a simple storage drive. Just format it then.

 

[nate42nd]

You could use a third party partitioning program to delete the Vista partition and merge them and make one. Is that what you are asking? If I understand you this will work.

Paragon is good
Easus is also good (and free)

Easus Partition Manager Express - Free software downloads and reviews - CNET Download.com

 

[torrentg]

Your Vista drive contains the boot files for your pc. Move them to your 7 drive. There are tutuorials for this and if you can't find them, post back.

Then set bios to boot from the 7 drive instead. Then you could format the Vista drive. Also, you should remove Vista from the boot procedure. I think you can do that in msconfig (from the search box) as I've seen others say. I personally use EasyBCD for this type of thing.

 

[barney]

Wow this is quick! I want to wipe out the vista partition which will then give me a clean hard drive to partition for backup and storage I cannot use disk management to change to a logical drive it does not have thet option available.
If I use third party software and reformat the vista drive will it affect the boot of 7.
7 is on disk 0 and vista disk 1?

best

barney

 

[torrentg]

If I use third party software and reformat the vista drive will it affect the boot of 7.


barney

Yes. You would not be able to boot if you don't follow my advice above.

Get your system setup stable booting off the 7 drive, then worry about formatting the Vista one.

 

[Captain Zero]

Torrentg is right, don't format if you have ONE physical drive, I misunderstood you to mean that you had TWO physical drives, not one drive with two partitions.

 

[barney]

Hello torrentg I have already used msconfig and deleted the vista boot option. my system boots straight into 7.
I cannot find the tutorial you mention could you point me in that direction please?
best

barney

 

[barney]

The operating systems are on 2 Drives vista on disk 1 and 7 on disk 0
vista has no boot option

best

barney

 

[nate42nd]

+1....I misunderstood you as well. Good luck.

 

[Uber Philf]

good, now just format the vista drive and it should be all good.

Holla if ya need help with it..

Enzo.

 

[torrentg]

Ok, good about deleting Vista with msconfig. But when you are in 7 like just now, it still used your Vista drive to boot from.

Make sure your computer is set to see all hidden files and system files.

Then you need to copy from the Vista drive to the 7 drive the following:

bootmgr file from root to root.
Boot folder from root to root.

However, when copying the boot folder, windows will not allow to copy the file called bcd. Choose to skip this when it asks you while copying the folder.

Then you can do this command from the command prompt:

bcdedit /export C:\boot\bcd


Now you can change bios to boot from the 7 drive.

 

[barney]

Will Paragon work with windows 7 please?
best

barney

 

[YupYup]

The operating systems are on 2 Drives vista on disk 1 and 7 on disk 0
vista has no boot option

best

barney

Post a screenshot of your disk management.

 

[torrentg]

Post a screenshot of your disk management.

heh heh I know what you're getting at. he said that the Vista drive shows as the system drive. That's indicative of the boot files on that drive.

If he formats it somehow with a 3rd party tool without copying over the boot files to 7 first, say bye bye to booting. lol

 

[YupYup]

heh heh I know what you're getting at. he said that the Vista drive shows as the system drive. That's indicative of the boot files on that drive.

If he formats it somehow with a 3rd party tool without copying over the boot files to 7 first, say bye bye to booting. lol

No i was just curious to see the disk setup because in most cases if an active partition is not present before the windows 7 partition the setup creates the hidden system partition.

 

[barney]

torrentg have done exactly as you suggested I had to skip 2 files bcd and log all others copied to root ok.
However when executing the command line (changing X to C ) I get the following error
the store export operation has failed cannot create a file when that file already exists!
does this mean I already have a bootable win 7?

best

barney

 

[torrentg]

Ah, right YupYup.

yes, I had the wrong command barney. I placed the correct one there for you now. It is:

bcdedit /export C:\boot\bcd

If it completes well (you can check by going and looking if bcd is now at C:\boot\bcd), then you can reboot into bios, change the boot drive to 7 drive, post here that all went well and then format Vista drive. Good luck!

 

[barney]

That worked succesfully bcd is now in boot folder in the root of 7 I have rebooted succesfully but am not sure if 7 did it or vista? the only way to know is to now wipe out the vista partition I will now try
Thanks for your help

best

barney

 

[YupYup]

That worked succesfully bcd is now in boot folder in the root of 7 I have rebooted succesfully but am not sure if 7 did it or vista? the only way to know is to now wipe out the vista partition I will now try
Thanks for your help

best

barney

Or look at the bcdedit readout.