Safe removal of Vista partition on a Dual Boot.

Brian has given you excellent advice. I see you already converted C to Primary in the lastest picture, now you only need to Mark C Partition Active then run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times
until Win7 starts and holds the System Active flags.

You can then delete all other partitions and resize C into the prime left-hand lower address of the HD which has faster reads since it is closer to where the disk reader parks. To do this use Partition Wizard boot CD to Resize Partition - Video Help. Only PW boot disk will not fail during resizing with data loss while all others can except Disk Mgmt. Your files should be backed up anyway, just in case.

If you copy your files into the respective User folders from Vista then there should be no issues of sharing or permissions. If so post back a screenshot of the error you're getting.

Thanks again AddRAM

gregrocker said:

Brian has given you excellent advice. I see you already converted C to Primary in the lastest picture, now you only need to Mark C Partition Active then run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times
until Win7 starts and holds the System Active flags.

You can then delete all other partitions and resize C into the prime left-hand lower address of the HD which has faster reads since it is closer to where the disk reader parks. To do this use Partition Wizard boot CD to Resize Partition - Video Help. Only PW boot disk will not fail during resizing with data loss while all others can except Disk Mgmt. Your files should be backed up anyway, just in case.

If you copy your files into the respective User folders from Vista then there should be no issues of sharing or permissions. If so post back a screenshot of the error you're getting.

Thanks Greg

I had misunderstood Brian's earlier post. When he said that a Logical Drive couldn't be made Active I interpreted this as meaning "never". My error.

I'll do what you advise.

Regards.

Can you reactivate Vista using Diskpart or Partition Wizard bootable CD to Set Active/Inactive partition -Partition Wizard Video Help. If so you can try moving the boot files using Bootmgr - Move to C:\ with EasyBCD - Windows 7 Forums. This does not do as complete a job as 3 Startup Repairs (e.g. will not rewrite Repair console to F8 menu) but you may have corruption that won't allow the repairs to work as usual.

If this fails download, extract and copy to C these Attachment 299209 manually to assist the repair function. YOu may need to enter Control Panel>Folder Options>View to unhide Hidden and SYstem files to see them in Windows. If you can't start Windows then you can Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console

Confirm C is a Primary Partition and is marked Active, run Startup Repair up to 3 times to see if you can start Win7.

If it still won't start I would download Partition Wizard boot disk and burn to CD using Windows Image Burner. boot it to confirm using its map that C is Primary, Active, then run Rebuild MBR with Partition Wizard - Video Help. After applying steps, reboot. If Win7 won't start again run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times .

If Win7 still won't start reactivate Vista using PW disk or DIskpart to start Win7 again. We can walk you through alternatives like shrinking Vista to create a Sytem Reserved boot partition for Win7, or deleting everything on Vista down to its boot files, shrinking it to make it the boot partition, sliding everything over to the left to make more room for C.

Earlier I said you could delete the first two partitions, however if you haven't already done this I would save the first OEM partition which on Dell will still run bootable diagnostics from the F12 menu when left on the drive after reinstall. Recovery will not run after native Vista is removed.

Hi Greg

I've reactivated the Vista partition and booted into my Seven desktop. I figured it would be a good idea to back up the system so I downloaded Paragon but this wouldn't work as Windows Installer was not available. I tried again with Acronis but same answer. In fact, I couldn't open Outlook either so my plans to do some important work before resuming my quest to reorganise my partitions went down the pan.

Anyway, I'm now in the process of backing up everything to an external hard drive using Windows Backup. When that is complete I'll try moving the boot files as you suggest.

I'll edit this post with progress.

Cheers.

Paul the performance problems you're now experiencing in Win7 could not have anything to do with moving the boot files from what we've seen unless something extra was done that damaged Win7 that is not in the steps I gave you.

However if you are experiencing such problems with a new install, besides the issues with trying to move the System boot files to remove Vista, a better option might be to do a new Clean Install Windows 7 during which you use the Drive Options pictured in Steps 7 and 8 to delete all partitions, except the Dell OEM partition which I would keep if it will indeed run Dell Hardware Diagnostics from F12 Menu - test that now to check over your hardware and see if the OEM partition is functional.

There are also tips, tools and methods compiled in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which if you follow will assure you'll get and keep a perfect install.

If you want to go ahead and move the boot files we will help you get that done one way or the other so that you can delete Vista and recover its space into Win7. However it's hardly worth the effort if you have an install which is defective to begin with, when you can get it perfect with our help at hand.

Hi Greg

I've successfully backed-up and used EasyBCD to mark the C Drive as active and I am now ready to delete the other partitions. See attached. I haven't re-run Startup Repair.

However, before I do this I still have the new problem of my programs not opening (see error message on screenshot).

Is there an easy way to fix this or do you still recommend a clean install? If I can fix this problem and successfully delete remaining partitions then that would be my preference.

Yes I would reinstall with such serious problems so that you can get it perfect as detailed in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.

First run Dell Hardware Diagnostics from F12 Menu to both test the hardware and confirm that you can keep the first 48mb partition since having those diagnostics is valuable.

Then delete all other partitions during the booted reinstall using the Drive Options shown in Steps 7/8 of Clean Install Windows 7. Create New partition(s) in the space allowing it to assign the 100mb System Reserved boot partition. If you don't want the 100mb partition you can delete and prepartition the OS partition using Partition Wizard CD.