Remove RC to install RTM

Hi, I installed 7000 when it was released, on C: drive and then I installed 7100 on another drive, so that I could determine which one I preferred without risking losing all of my programs etc. I ended up just using 7100 as it threw up very few bugs, however, now that an actual release date for Windows 7 looms I would like to delete 7000 (on C:) and install the RTM.
Does anyone know how I can go about this? I only have 6gb left on C: so I can't even attempt an upgrade, and I would like to just do a fresh install anyhow. But I'd like to keep 7100 until I have the RTM running how I want it.
I guess what I would like to know is how do I format C: drive when its marked as "System"? It just won't allow the partition to be formatted.

Thanks.

Hi, thanks for the advice. I never noticed the "drive options" thing when I booted from the DVD last time, I'll try again tonight after work though.
Thanks again, your help is very much appreciated.


Patchy

Hello again, okay I tried booting from the disc again but was still unable to format C drive unfortunately.
Any other ideas? Would switching the HDD with C: on it from master to slave (and vice versa on the other HDD) make any difference?

I'd removed 7000 from the boot options so was having trouble accessing it, I wasn't sure if it even operated anymore. So I did a "repair" to bring the option to boot into it up again. I hadn't realised but I still had another version of W7 on my HDD aswell, it must be one of the 6*** series of builds, so now I also would like advice on how to remove the windows.old folder if possible please. I've tried taking ownership of it and deleting it but that doesn't work, even when I took ownership of each file it still wouldn't delete, so now I have a 20+gb folder sat on my drive. To be honest, I've been really disorganized since upgrading my HDD to a bigger one, and I've just let so much crap gather on my system.

Also, ChuckR, as you may have realised already by reading the above posts, I'm probably not "smart enough" so if I do find a way of formatting C: Drive how do I go about "keeping house" with all that boot stuff. I naively thought that if C: drive went and I lost any necassary boot files, that the new RTM installation would fix that. Or if I chose to just use 7100 until W7 was actually released, I could somehow fix the boot with the 7100 DVD. Is this not possible?

Thanks again for your time and advice.

You can remove the windows.old folder using the disk cleanup tool. On the other issue a screenshot of your disk configuration would help. Type disk management in the start menu to bring up the option to load it and use the snip tool to take a picture .

patchy said:

Also, ChuckR, as you may have realised already by reading the above posts, I'm probably not "smart enough" so if I do find a way of formatting C: Drive how do I go about "keeping house" with all that boot stuff. I naively thought that if C: drive went and I lost any necassary boot files, that the new RTM installation would fix that. Or if I chose to just use 7100 until W7 was actually released, I could somehow fix the boot with the 7100 DVD. Is this not possible?

Patchy,
I'm sorry about the way I wrote the post:
when I said "he", I was not referring to you - I was referring to the Win 7 software: Setup and Install.

I edited the above post for clarity.

My apologies!!!

I too often refer to computer stuff as 'people-like'...

Hey, ChuckR, it's cool, I didn't take the post in offensive way. Although after re-reading my reply post I guess it certainly came across as that I did.

Okay, Frostbite, here's the screen capture of disk management.

Again, thanks for any help that can be offered.

It appears your booting from the C: on the disk map and the boot files are stored there. What you need to do is copy the boot files over to the M: Drive. You can do this using a tool called Bcdboot

   Warning

Take a system backup using an imaging tool before you try anything. As the command could make your system unbootable

Code:

 
Bcdboot - Bcd boot file creation and repair tool.
The bcdboot.exe command-line tool is used to copy critical boot files to the
system partition and to create a new system BCD store.
bcdboot <source> [/l <locale>] [/s <volume-letter>] [/v]
[/m [{OS Loader ID}]]
source Specifies the location of the windows system root.
/l Specifies an optional locale parameter to use when
initializing the BCD store. The default is US English.
/s Specifies an optional volume letter parameter to designate
the target system partition where boot environment files are
copied. The default is the system partition identified by
the firmware.
/v Enables verbose mode.
/m If an OS loader GUID is provided, this option merges the
given loader object with the system template to produce a
bootable entry. Otherwise, only global objects are merged.
 
Examples: bcdboot c:\windows /l en-us
bcdboot c:\windows /s h:
bcdboot c:\windows /m {d58d10c6-df53-11dc-878f-00064f4f4e08}

The command you would want is

bcdboot M:\windows /s M:


You then want to go into your BIOS and make disk1 the primary disk for booting. Or you could just wait untill you get the RTM version of Windows and format both the partitions on install and install into whichever free space you want after copying your files you want to save

patchy said:

I guess what I would like to know is how do I format C: drive when its marked as "System"? It just won't allow the partition to be formatted. Thanks.

Patchy; If I understand your situation correctly, you have 7 Beta (7000) on the C:/ drive and 7 RC (7100 the one you want on drive C:/) on another hard drive.

Here is what I would suggest you do: boot to the 7 RC install DVD. When you get to the place where you choose the hard drive, use the "Drive options (advanced)" link and delete both the 210MB boot partition, and the Windows partition. Select the "unallocated space" to install 7 RC and go ahead and install it there.

Then you can use this open-source image program "Clonezilla" to copy the "image" of your 7 RC from the other drive to your C:/ drive and replace the 7 RC you just installed with the one you have been using. By doing it this way, you will have a working 7 you can use temporary while you move your RC 7 from one drive to the C:/ drive. Eventually, you get back to using the 7 RC without making any changes or losing any data.

Here is a link to how to use "Clonezilla" with Windows 7.

Now, the only possible glitch here is that the size of the partition holding your 7 RC needs to be the same size or smaller than the partition on C:/ where you are going to put it. Use the Windows "Disk Management" utility to shrink the partion with 7 RC, to match or less than drive C:/ before you create the "image" or move the image from disk to disk.

If you want to try this and have questions I would be glad to try to answer them.

Robert