Today I bought a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate for my HTPC which is using Vista Home Premium.
The HTPC hard disk was like this.
Total 1TB and has 2 partitions.
C: Vista has 25GB <= has vista and some programs
G: Main has 920 GB <= has movies, games and tv shows.
I couldn't do and upgrade or clean install on Drive C: because it need 5GB more of free space for some reason..
So I did this:
I managed to shrink G: drive using disk management and got 30GB out of it for Windows 7
I then formated the remaining 30GB and named it Drive F. Installed Win 7 on it and everything was fine till I got back home 10 hours later.
To find it saying Boot Manager missing. Press Alt+Ctrl+Delete to restart. I did it and it brought me back to square one.
System Manufacturer/Model Number: Self built OS: Windows 7 Professional CPU: Asus AMD 9550 Quad Core Motherboard: Asus M3A78-EM Memory: 4GB DDR3 Graphics Card: Saphire ATI HD 4850 1GB Monitor(s) Displays: Pioneer Plasma - PDP508A Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Keyboard: Dinovo Edge Mouse: Dinovo Edge PSU: Big Ant 600W Case: Antec Hard Drives: 1TB Samsung
2TB Seagate
Is there a way i can make the F: Drive that has Win 7 on it the main HDD? so that it boots from there?? and How do I delete the C: Drive? so that all of Vista's components are gone.
System Manufacturer/Model Number: Self built OS: Windows 7 Professional CPU: Asus AMD 9550 Quad Core Motherboard: Asus M3A78-EM Memory: 4GB DDR3 Graphics Card: Saphire ATI HD 4850 1GB Monitor(s) Displays: Pioneer Plasma - PDP508A Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Keyboard: Dinovo Edge Mouse: Dinovo Edge PSU: Big Ant 600W Case: Antec Hard Drives: 1TB Samsung
2TB Seagate
We need to see a picture of your Disk Management map but since you cannot get into Windows 7, you need to boot from the Win7 installer, select Repair my Computer and run Startup repair 3 times to get into your Win7.
Then use the Snipping Tool on Start>Programs to take a picture of your entire Disk Mangement map and attach it here using the paper clip in reply box.
If you have your Win7 installed way out on the far right of your HD and want to get rid of Vista in the first partition, then you need to use a 3rd party partition manager like free Partition Wizard to delete Vista, resize your middle storage drive to make more room for Windows 7 in the old Vista space, then mark active and copy Windows 7 over into the desired first partition and delete it's old partition.
You then run startup repair again 3 times to rewrite the MBR to new Win7 partition.
System Manufacturer/Model Number: Self built OS: Windows 7 Professional CPU: Asus AMD 9550 Quad Core Motherboard: Asus M3A78-EM Memory: 4GB DDR3 Graphics Card: Saphire ATI HD 4850 1GB Monitor(s) Displays: Pioneer Plasma - PDP508A Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Keyboard: Dinovo Edge Mouse: Dinovo Edge PSU: Big Ant 600W Case: Antec Hard Drives: 1TB Samsung
2TB Seagate
System Manufacturer/Model Number: Self built OS: Windows 7 Professional CPU: Asus AMD 9550 Quad Core Motherboard: Asus M3A78-EM Memory: 4GB DDR3 Graphics Card: Saphire ATI HD 4850 1GB Monitor(s) Displays: Pioneer Plasma - PDP508A Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Keyboard: Dinovo Edge Mouse: Dinovo Edge PSU: Big Ant 600W Case: Antec Hard Drives: 1TB Samsung
2TB Seagate
System Manufacturer/Model Number: Self built OS: Windows 7 Professional CPU: Asus AMD 9550 Quad Core Motherboard: Asus M3A78-EM Memory: 4GB DDR3 Graphics Card: Saphire ATI HD 4850 1GB Monitor(s) Displays: Pioneer Plasma - PDP508A Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Keyboard: Dinovo Edge Mouse: Dinovo Edge PSU: Big Ant 600W Case: Antec Hard Drives: 1TB Samsung
2TB Seagate
Back up your files. If you can't stand to lose your Win7 partition, use Backup Center to store an image of it which can be used to reimage HD in 15 minutes. Move/Copy operations can fail.
Right click G:Main and Resize/Move. Drag the left border to make the desired size of a first partition.
Right click on Windows 7, verify again it is Active, then Copy into unallocated space you have made where Vista was.
Delete the original Win7 partition. Apply all operations.
When complete, if necessary boot into Win7 installer and run Startup Repair 3 times.
Later, recover the old Win7 partition into G: and make a new primary partition to store your Recovery Image so reinstalls will never again be necessary.
*Paragon Partition Pro is a paid program which can copy the MBR along with Win7. Otherwise Startup Repair wil likely be necessary to rewrite the MBR, normally on the third reboot.
Another thing is since I put Win 7 on this HTPC there is like 1 inch of black space left between the image and the side of the screen. The resolution is already at 1920 x 1080. But it is not filling out the entire screen like Vista did before.
System Manufacturer/Model Number: Self built OS: Windows 7 Professional CPU: Asus AMD 9550 Quad Core Motherboard: Asus M3A78-EM Memory: 4GB DDR3 Graphics Card: Saphire ATI HD 4850 1GB Monitor(s) Displays: Pioneer Plasma - PDP508A Screen Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Keyboard: Dinovo Edge Mouse: Dinovo Edge PSU: Big Ant 600W Case: Antec Hard Drives: 1TB Samsung
2TB Seagate