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Help with removing dual boot and reinstallation
Hello everyone. I've been reading a few guides on how to do this but I think I might have done something wrong during the installation of Windows 7 Ultimate that is screwing me up, or I'm just very paranoid. A little background on how this started, and I'll highlight important bits (to me at least) in bold for those who hate reading walls of text.
My machine was originally running Windows XP 32bit. I had a old drive that had Vista installed on it and tossed that into the case as well, and eventually got that up and running again without issue (took a while and seems silly, I know). So I had two independent HD (We'll call them Disk X and Disk Y) with two independent operating systems and was chugging along happily. Recently I bought Windows 7 Ultimate and decided it was time to move on from Vista. I opted for a clean install on Drive Y from a usb installer versus doing the upgrade, and (maybe foolishly) formatted the drive just to be certain things would be off to a fresh start. The installer ran into a roadblock concerning missing SATA controller drivers, so I let it be. Kind of figured that problem out later on (I'll get to that in a second) and this is where the point of it all comes in.
Problem
On Drive X which held my XP install, I got the bright idea to setup a dual boot versus having both operating systems independent of each other again. It went through without a hitch to (I assumed) Drive Y so most of the windows files for Win7 Ultimate are on there.
What I want to do now that I know how to work around the previous roadblock is wipe the install of Windows 7 from my computer on Drive X, keep XP unchanged on drive X, and install 7 Ultimate completely on Drive Y.
Also, I do not have the original installation disk for XP since it was put on at a shop. I do still have my usb installer for Windows 7 Ultimate however. All of my important data files are backed up and I do have a image of Drive X that I made with Macrium Reflect.
Question Time!
I've been looking at the steps provided in Dual Boot - Delete a OS and a few more guides I was able to scratch up that seemed relevant but I'm stuck. Disk Management shows Drive Y as being the active partition, with Drive X being system. If I right click on Drive Y and click delete partition, it gives me a warning about all data being lost on it blah blah, but my question is this: Will deleting the partition on Drive Y affect Drive X at all since they are setup in a dual boot?
Drive X[C:] Windows XP Home Premium 32bit Drive Y[F:]= Windows 7 Ult. 32bit
I downloaded EasyBCD 2.2 and tried one of the steps listed in the above mentioned tutorial to cleanup the bootmgr but it said that the operation is valid only on Vista, Win7, or Win8. Question 2: Am I royally screwed?
That leads me to my last question: Is there a better way for me to do this, or should I proceed with what I have?
Solutions?
If anyone out there can help me out with this I would gladly appreciate it. It might just be a case of my paranoia slipping into the equation, but I cant afford to stumble along without being sure that I should be doing what I am.
My apologies for the wall of text.