Removing the active partition in a dual boot setup

Yes---booting off the cd...I'll read the other solution and see what that's all about---but if requires launching anything from the command prompt in admin mode--that's something I already havent been able to do(we've tried that before).

Any other utilities that are bootable with changing drive letters as options?

And I have burned 2 CD's already.

It only requires you to open Disk Mgmt and Regedit as New Task, so maybe that will work if you follow the tutorial closely.

I would exhaust all the possibilities given because we are running out of options.

Will you lose files if you clean reinstall?

I would zero the drive if you do, which can be done with Diskpart commands from WIn7 DVD.

OK---I finally got this solved.
Thanks to all for helping.

Part of the problem was being made worse due to me not doing things right! :)

When I was being asked to run things in admin mode---I was trying that while logged on in normal mode---which wasnt working. I finally booted in safe mode to do the same and I was able to run the setup.exe. this however only gave me the option to install and not repair--so I skipped that.

I then went back to run the activation using the commands and it still errored out like before on some VBS script.

I took the regedit route and went directly after the mounted devices key--and changed what was assigned to C to something else and the drive letter "g" to "c". Then the reboot took care of that issue.
I was presented with a activation window--where I then entered my key again and everything was fine after that.

Thanks once again to all who gave meaningful insights to try and resolve this.

The only other thing that I noticed now----it boots up much slower.
Any ideas why? I have rebooted 4-5 times already and its about 10-12 seconds longer than usual.

I will surely run the WEI and find out more about that.
I have already moved the partitions around now that the system is up and reallocated the space etc....how is that different than specifically moving the MBR to the lower HD address?--and how would we do just that?

It makes sense--but I've never tried that before.

You can't move the mbr. It stays where it is.

What are you wanting to do exactly?

Was referring to moving the Win7 partition into the lower address, achieved by Resizing with booted Partition Wizard to drag left Win7 partition border over deleted OS space.

This is assuming you had deleted OS in first partition space since we haven't seen the screenshot.

This may be a longshot in regaining startup performance, however. Although the MBR would probably need to be repaired if Win7 is resized in this manner, and that might change startup performance.

My suggestion was more to help you complete the dual boot removal, with the added hope that it would improve delayed startup you are suddenly experiencing.

If not, and Diagnostics Performance log or Boot Logging via F8 don't reveal what is delaying startup, I would personally clean reinstall.

I'll get a screenshot to you guys so you can see---but the OS is on the "C" drive letter and that happens to be on the primary partition which is the first on the list (visually on the left side of the disk when seeing it through a partition tool).

I dont know how that translates to the sectors on the disk or where exactly the MBR lands up in that partition. I was curious as to why
1. The performance got much slower as part of removing the XP partition and moving everything accordingly?
2. And trying to follow gregrocker's suggestion as I havent done that before.

Try booting 7 dvd.

When you get to the window that says"Install Now" - don't click that.

Press shift+F10 together.

A command prompt will pop up.

type:

bootsect /nt60 all

then press enter.

You should get a successfully completed message.

Close command window.

Close Install Now window.

See if that helps.

Aaah! ok...I can do that....what does do behind the scenes? Just reinstall the OS on top of it?
Will that need new updates etc for patches or does all of that stay as is?