Current dual boot-deleting Vista

Minotar said:

SIW2 said:

Interesting, I am curious what went on with your partitioning.

How did you get 2 logical drives and free space ?

There was only 1 logical drive before.

Attachment 33094

How does it look now going left to right?

It looks a bit different from the partition wizard but when i deleted Vista which was D i copied WIN7 into the unallocated space and was still left with 39gbs of space which i thought was weird but meh

As for the logical one i changed some after all the rest failed in the vain hope it would work,i now have 2 primary and 1 logical.

Unallocated (recover partition 11.72 GB) -/- Windows 7 64bit (125.34gb)-/- Unallocated (Ex System partiton, 39.41 GB ?) -/- Data (163.95GB) -/- Windows 7 64bit (125.34GB)

The first windows 7 partiton is Active.

All the rest are status "none".

The first Win7 and Data partition are primary.

The rest are logical.

Sorry for the typo. SIW2 tagteam a lot.

I think the problem may possibly be the deleted Recovery (first) partition was not first merged with Vista (second) deleted space before Win7 was copied onto it.

SIW2 said:

Boot the macrium cd and follow the screen - couldn't be easier - make sure you select Primary and Active - restore mbr as well - will be as before:

Macrium Reflect - Blogs and News

Ah..i didnt mount the file on a cd,i merely stored it in the data partition.

And im not giving up,i was going to try the same process again and make sure i done everything to the letter,sorry if it sounded like that

gregrocker said:

Sorry for the typo. SIW2 tagteam a lot.

I think the prob may possibly be the deleted Recovery (first) partition was not first merged with Vista (second) deleted space before Win7 was copied onto it. So it is not on the boot sector? (tho marked active)

That is exactly what i done,i deleted vista,copied 7 into said space,and then deleted the recovery partition.

When you deleted the Recovery Partition, I think it wiped out the boot sector which is on the first part of the disk. It needed to have that unallocated space added to the deleted Vista space before copying Win7 into it, I believe. This is reparable.

At worst you'd have to reinstall Win7 to that combined first partition after booting from installer, merging that space, then creating a new partition and formatting it.

Your goal is to have Win7 in first partition and your data in a second, right?

I hope everyone reading this sees what is involved in trying to delete Vista from first partition when you (quickly) discover you don't want it any more. THis has happened three times on this board today. It is tricky enough to do myself but guiding someone running between computers is treacherous.

The way it has worked in my own cases is to delete Vista using disk management software like Paragon, copy Win7 into the space and mark active, run Startup Repair 3 times.

gregrocker said:

When you deleted the Recovery Partition, it wiped out the boot sector. It needed to have that unallocated space added to the deleted Vista space before copying Win7 into it, I believe. This is reparable.

At worst you'd have to reinstall Win7 to that drive after booting from installer, merging that space, then creating a new partition and formatting it.

Your goal is to have Win7 in first partition and your data in a second, right?

Thats the plan yes.

So i would have to merge the unallocated space with both win7 partitions,then format and do a clean install of windows 7?

gregrocker said:

I hope everyone reading this sees what is involved in trying to delete Vista from first partition when you (quickly) see you don't want it any more. THis has happened three times on this board today. It is tricky enough to do myself but guiding someone running between computers is treacherous.

I second that,it is far more complicated than i first thought,i thought it would be similar to dual booting two OS's. Its not.


And seriously,thanks to both of you,id would have been lost a long time ago otherwise.

LOL.

I believe I said make original 7 partition Primary before copying it.

I would delete the NEW 7 partition - make the original 7 Primary DON'T FORGET TO CLICK APPLY - copy it into the new ( now larger ) Unallocated space - ( on the left in PW window).

Should be fine - make sure the new one shows as primary and active - then do the 3 times startup repair thing.

Minotar said:

gregrocker said:

When you deleted the Recovery Partition, it wiped out the boot sector. It needed to have that unallocated space added to the deleted Vista space before copying Win7 into it, I believe. This is reparable.

At worst you'd have to reinstall Win7 to that drive after booting from installer, merging that space, then creating a new partition and formatting it.

Your goal is to have Win7 in first partition and your data in a second, right?

Thats the plan yes.

So i would have to merge the unallocated space with both win7 partitions,then format and do a clean install of windows 7?

This may not be necessary with SIW2's troubleshooting steps above in #47.

And NO you would not merge the space between the original WIn7 and the copied win7. If you go on to reinstall, you would boot into installer, choose CUstom>advanced tools and delete everything in the space to the left of the data partition, then create and format a partition there to install Win7 (will be C, too) . You should then delete the old WIndows 7 partition on the far right which you copied from because it isn't needed. Then install to first partition.

Don't delete the original 7.

See my post 47.

There's plenty of options - try post 47 first as it will be quicker.

SIW2 said:

Don't delete the original 7.

See my post 47.

There's plenty of options - try post 47 first as it will be quicker.

Im just waiting on the copy now,should only be another few minutes:)