Dual boot remove issue

Hi,

I have windows 7 and Vista installed, both ultimate and 64bit.
they are install on 2 seperate physical drives.

Vista was installed first about a year or so ago. i added a new drive and put windows 7 on it. i would like to remove the vista all together as i am happy with windows 7.

in disk manager when i look at both the drives they are showing up and both being active and primary. but the W7 is showing as the boot drive. i am not able to format the vista drive. the only options that are not greyed out are change drive letter and shrink volume.

I have been doing some research and i have tried this option

bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force

i have done it remotely and if it worked it should have rebooted the system and i should be able to remote to the system. i am unable to reach it now until i get home.

my question is why am i unable to format the vista drive in W7 and have i just screwed up my bootloader?

i will update what happened later but any info would be good.

In windows 7 "disk management" one of the partitions will be marked as "Boot" and this is where the boot manager is , If it's in your windows 7 partition because you installed it first then you can simply format the Vista partition, but if it's in the Vista partition then a format will delete the boot manager and leave your system unbootable, you can try and move the boot manager files then rewrite it starting with using a tool like Easybcd or you can make a recovery disc in windows 7 then run it after deleting the Vista partition, and that will get you back into windows 7 ....

You need to unplug the Vista drive, make sure Win7 is set in the BIOS to boot first, then try booting into Win7.

If it fails, then boot into the Win7 installer Repair console and run Startup Repair 3 times as there may be multiple issues which need fixing - these commands are automated in Win7.

After you get Win7 up and running as a single boot, then plug in your Vista drive and try to delete it in Disk Management. If that fails, download and burn free Partition Wizard, boot from it to delete Vista drive and re-partition as you wish.

When all set up, use Win7 backup imaging to store a backup image to another drive so that you never need to reinstall again, just reimage the HDD (or a replacement) in 15 minutes by booting into the Win7 installer Repair console.

the boot is showing as on the windows 7 drive. i was hopeing there was an easier way to do it then unplugging the drive as i have 5 drives in the system and not sure which one it is... guess i have to play that wonderful game of search and destroy. i have a program already that will blow the drive away in dos...

was just hopeing there was an easier way then playing around with the hardware...

You can leave the drives plugged in and force delete the Vista drive using bootable Partition Wizard.

Any issues resulting in Win7 being unable to boot can be repaired by booting into the Win7 installer Repair Console and running Startup Repair 3 times.

If you have any problems, after booting into Win7 please post a screenshot of Win7 Disk Management map. Use the screen capture utility in Win7 start list and attach file using paper clip in dialogue box here.

That is what I said above....

well i have found the boot folder on the vista drive along with the bootmanger. so that would tell me it uses those files for the boot. i will run a test ny unplugging the drive and booting up to see what happens and see if i can get it to run W7 if this works then i will kill the drive in dos.

Booting Win7 installer>Repair console>startup repair automates any needed commands.

Just run it enough times to handle multiple issues and it should boot, but until you unplug or force delete Vista drive it will defer to the Vista bootloader.