Removing Windows 7 from boot menu

markland · 08 Jun 2009

Hi, ive recently formatted and deleted the windows 7 partition from my harddrive, however i still have windows 7 option in the boot menu, to try and get rid of this i selected windows 7 hoping that some options to delete it from the menu would appear but none did and all i got was an error message telling me to reinstall windows or something.

XP works fine.

Anyone know how to remove windows 7 from the boot menu without actually still having it on a partition?

ten · 08 Jun 2009

Yeah, EasyBCD will do it. Click on Manage Bootloader > Uninstall the Vista Bootloader > Write MBR button.

antalgebra · 08 Jun 2009

ten said:

Yeah, EasyBCD will do it. Click on Manage Bootloader > Uninstall the Vista Bootloader > Write MBR button.

did this work? im trying to get rid of an old install of windows also, but Im looking for a way to do it without the BCD program... any thoughts?

WindowZ · 09 Jun 2009

You need to fix your MBR (master boot record)

1. Boot of your XP disk and choose to repair Windows
2. Get to a command prompt screen/DOS screen whatever
3. Enter the command- "bootrec /fixmbr"

no quotes of course

ten · 09 Jun 2009

bootrec is for Vista/Win7, not XP

Captain Zero · 09 Jun 2009

If memory serves... (It's been a while!)

1 - Right-click on My Computer
2 - Select the Advanced tab
3 - Select Settings in the 'Startup and Recovery' section.
4 - In the 'Default Operating System' drop-down, select Windows XP
5 - Select Ok.

Going from memory on that one, hope it's accurate but that should do it.

ten · 09 Jun 2009

That's not going to remove it as he asked.

Captain Zero · 09 Jun 2009

Then I don't understand his question. As I read it, he had a dual boot XP/7 and he deleted the 7 partition but XP is still trying to boot into 7?

YupYup · 09 Jun 2009

ten said:

bootrec is for Vista/Win7, not XP

Correct, "fdisk /mbr" is for XP.

ten said:

That's not going to remove it as he asked.

Technically the OP only asked to remove the boot entry not the bootloader, but yes he would need to use bcdedit instead of an XP program.

Night Hawk · 10 Jun 2009

YupYup said:

Correct, "fdisk /mbr" is for XP.

Technically the OP only asked to remove the boot entry not the bootloader, but yes he would need to use bcdedit instead of an XP program.

"fdisk /mbr"? Fdisk is the old dos partitioning tool for Fat based versions(9x-ME).

To see the XP installation return to it's original configuration you would boot upto the recovery console by using the "press R for repair" option while booting from the XP disk to reach that.

Once you are logged on as administrator when selecting the XP installation detected you simply use the "fixboot" and "fixmbr" commands and restart the system for a normail XP startup.

You won't be able to remove the boot folder the 7 installer placed there unless you can take ownership as well as gain the permissions needed to uncheck the read only box in the properties. But you will no longer be booting from the bootmgr but XP's ntldr file and boot.ini configuration.