Nice try BFK.
The simplest way is to make sure the windows 7 drive is the first Active partition in boot order.
Then boot the 7 dvd/repair disc and run startup repair - takes up to 3 runs.
I don't usually bother trying to give people commands any more in straightforward cases.
As I noted what I did, disconnect the Vista drive and then see if you can boot with the Windows 7 drive. And, if all is well that proves what I said that they are totally separate and other than the possible dual boot in Windows 7 (and I outlined how to get rid of that) there is nothing else you have to do. You can take the second physical hard drive, remove it or reformat it and use it for whatever.
Hello SIW.
So he would mark the Windows 7 partition active and set Disk 1 as the first boot device in the main BIOS and use the esc key (one-time boot menu for HP) to select to boot the CD/DVD drive and do the startup repairs.
It's a lappy and he can't disconnect a HDD without taking the thing apart.
If he did remove the Vista HDD the PC wouldn't boot at all as that's the "System" partition.
Yeah.....about that. One problem, no install disc. Anything else?
How did you install Windows 7 to start with.
Create this and boot that.
How to Create a Windows 7 System Repair Disc
Thanks for your help SIW!
I was going to link you to the Neosmart download - but you can run off your own as you can still boot into 7.
The tutorial BFK linked shows you how.
[For those who don't have a cdrom drive - there will almost certainly be an inbuilt recovery disc creator of some kind so you can create a bootable flash - assuming your 7 was preinstalled.]
I HAD an installation disc, but where it is now, I couldn't tell you.
In addition to marking Win7 partition Active in Disk mgmt, if you can't move Win7 HD into DISK0 slot then you'll need to mark Vista partition Inactive using Diskpart from Win7 command Line: Partition - Mark as Active - Windows 7 Forums
Otherwise running the Win7 Startup Repairs will continue to write the System Boot Files to Vista partition since it will remain the first Active partition.
If you want to delete Vista partition at this time, you can also wipe it first using Diskpart Clean All command from Win7 DVD/Repair CD which will remove it as an issue:
Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command
Elevated Command Prompt - Windows 7 Forums
Last edited by gregrocker; 02 Apr 2011 at 18:04.
Quote