Dual boot with XP that now doesnt provide option

[kwack]

From the start.

I created a separate partiton and installed Win 7 fine. It dual booted fine as well. I then renamed the old XP boot partition and this caused the PC to give NTLDR missing and wouldnt boot.

So I reinstalled Win 7 as a custom install and it all boots fine into Win 7 without providing me a dual boot option. I am not too concerned about this as eventually I was going to go completely over to Win 7 anyway

Question I have is
1) The old Win XP boot partition is viewable in explorer. Can I just reformat this and reclaim the space - I want to make sure that the PC is not looking for any files in that old partition
2) Can I delete the Windows.old folder as well

Thanks

Kwack

Thanks

 

[Tews]

Hi Kwak and welcome to the forums.. I'd have a look at Brinks tutorial on how to expand partitions before you do anything that may bork your system up.. Read about it -=> here

Once you are finished reinstalling, be sure to browse the windows.old folder for any files you may need, then you may delete it if you wish..

 

[torrentg]

Windows.old folder can be deleted as long as you're satisfied that there's nothing you want in it. I'm pretty sure Disk Cleanup has an option for this when you run it. If not, you can delete from within explorer.

As for your first question, please post a screenshot of disk management so we know where your system partition resides.

 

[gregrocker]

Hi Kwak and welcome to the forums.. I'd have a look at Brinks tutorial on how to expand partitions before you do anything that may bork your system up.. Read about it -=> here

Once you are finished reinstalling, be sure to browse the windows.old folder for any files you may need, then you may delete it if you wish..

Thanks for the link to Brink's tutorial on reclaiming the first partition for all these guys deciding to bail out on XP/Vista within a day or two! (It took us beta testers a little longer but we had 7bugs then!). What I wonder is if it actually moves the Win7 into the first partition's space like copying it and moving it over using Partition Wizard? Or does it matter?

The important thing is that the Active flag is passed to your new Win7 partition and then after XP deletion, startup repair is run from the booted Win7 installer to rewrite the boot.

 

[kwack]

I will post up a disk management screen shot when I get home. I would suspect that the win 7 partition which is C drive now will be the system drive as there is no dual boot option anymore

I will probably use a 3rd party partition manager as I am familiar with these
Cheers
Kwack

 

[kwack]

Here is an explanation of my hard disks

Hard drive 1
d: 1.local disk (150gb) Healthy active, primary - thsi is my old Win XP
e: games: healthy primary partition
c: Windows 7 - healthy (boot, page file, crash dump, logical)

I want to keep C and E but remove d and ad back into e.

The dual boot option does nto seem to exist anymore so just want to make sure I can reclaim the space and not have to re-install/repair Win 7

Is this possible looking at this using partition manager or such like

Thanks

Kwack

 

[torrentg]

We need to know system partition. "Boot" partition actually in reality means Windows is there. "System" partition actually means bootmgr and boot folder are there.

Is D: your system partition?

Proceed like so, if so.

Ensure you can see all system and hidden files in explorer.

Copy bootmgr file from D:\ to C:\
Copy boot folder from D:\ to C:\ and ignore that it can not copy bcd and bcd.log. Tell it to skip them.

Run this command from elevated command prompt.

bcdedit /export C:\boot\bcd

Reboot into bios and make it so it has C: drive as the first boot device. Reboot into Windows 7.

Then check disk management that C is now your system partition. If so, format D. Add it to E.

Use Easybcd to remove the boot reference to old XP.

 

[gregrocker]

Here is an explanation of my hard disks

Hard drive 1
d: 1.local disk (150gb) Healthy active, primary - thsi is my old Win XP
e: games: healthy primary partition
c: Windows 7 - healthy (boot, page file, crash dump, logical)

I want to keep C and E but remove d and ad back into e.

The dual boot option does nto seem to exist anymore so just want to make sure I can reclaim the space and not have to re-install/repair Win 7

Is this possible looking at this using partition manager or such like

Thanks

Kwack

Kwack, here's another option to consider which has worked for me and others here.

Whichever option you choose, make an image of your HDD using Win7's Backup Imaging utility and save it externally. These operations can fail, but with the image you can restore your HDD in 15 minutes to try again.

If your Win7 partition C: is same/smaller size* as your D:XP then:

--use free Partition Wizard bootable disk to delete D:XP, mark C:Win7 active then copy it over to D: space. Cue up all of these steps before clicking Apply.

--boot into the Win7 installer's Repair console to run startup repair three times. It doesn't usually work in this case if it is offered up when you boot into the installer Repair console, but must be clicked from its link and sometimes more than once since there are multiple issues to fix.

--when booted into Win7, use Disk Management or PW to delete the original Win7 you copied from. This step was saved in case you needed to do the copy operation over.

*IF your WIn7 partition is larger than the XP one, then you will need to shrink Win7 enough to fit in deleted XP space. Later you can move your data drive over to reclaim the copied/deleted Win7 space and expand your WIn7 partition.

 

[kwack]

The Bootmgr file and folder is in teh C drive which is where the Windows 7 has been installed. I also checked in control panel, admin tool, system config and it says under boot tab

Windows 7 (C): is current OS

So using easus partitoon manager do you thin it will be ok to just reformat the old D drive with XP on it

Cheers

KWack

 

[gregrocker]

The Bootmgr file and folder is in teh C drive which is where the Windows 7 has been installed. I also checked in control panel, admin tool, system config and it says under boot tab

Windows 7 (C): is current OS

So using easus partitoon manager do you thin it will be ok to just reformat the old D drive with XP on it

Cheers

KWack

Easeus will work if it's not 64 bit. If so use Partition Wizard.

You can reformat D: but first consider moving Win7 into that unallocated space since first partition is faster read by the laser.

 

[kwack]

Just a quick replt to Gregrocker. I tried to do a image backup but as I have another drive with 320gb onthe utility looks to take a back up of this as well and I havent enough space. Can I just take an image of the Win7 partition??
Cheers

Kwack

 

[kwack]

I have win 7 32 bit. So in terms of steps to take do I reformat the d drive first, it becomes unallocated and then move Win 7 across?

 

[kwack]

If I want to copy across the Win 7 on the C drive. Is the following the correct course of acxtion

1) Reformat d drive
2) Copy across Win 7 to this drive
3) Rename D to C drive and then it should boot from ths firt drive on that HDD

Cheers

KWack

 

[gregrocker]

Just a quick replt to Gregrocker. I tried to do a image backup but as I have another drive with 320gb onthe utility looks to take a back up of this as well and I havent enough space. Can I just take an image of the Win7 partition??
Cheers

Kwack

You would need to use 3rd party imaging software like Acronis. Did it say it wanted that much space?

If I want to copy across the Win 7 on the C drive. Is the following the correct course of acxtion

1) Reformat d drive
2) Copy across Win 7 to this drive
3) Rename D to C drive and then it should boot from ths firt drive on that HDD

Cheers

KWack

Just delete the D:XP drive, mark C:Win7 drive active then copy it over to previous D: unallocated space (as it will require anyway).

You cannot change letter on a system drive and you want your Win7 to be C: anyway, so if it doesn't startup after restart from Partition Wizard, boot into Win7 installer and run Startup Repair 3 times which automates it all.

 

[kwack]

Yep - I will use Easus to copy the Win 7 partition to my USBhard drive

 

[kwack]

So I reformatted the Win XP drive and it went through its process inEasus rebooted etc. But teh drive letter still appears and has all of its allocated disk space used up.

Is this because it is a primary rather than logical#

Any ideas

Cheers

KWack

 

[gregrocker]

So I reformatted the Win XP drive and it went through its process inEasus rebooted etc. But teh drive letter still appears and has all of its allocated disk space used up.

Is this because it is a primary rather than logical#

Any ideas

Cheers

KWack

Why did you format it instead of just delete it?

You don't want a partition there, except for the C:Win7 you copy over to there into unallocated space

So delete the D: and make it unallocated space

Then right click on the C: Win7 drive and copy it. It will ask where you want to put it so point it to the first partition space where D:XP was.

 

[kwack]

Checking teh Easus instructiosn I think it didnt format as teh D drive is still active which suggests it is active. Not suer what to do to be honest. I can deselect the active status and then format

Whilst teh C drive wirth Win 7 on says Boot

 

[kwack]

Ok cheers will try deleting and then copyng across to unallocated spcae

Thanks agian

Kwack

 

[gregrocker]

Yep - I will use Easus to copy the Win 7 partition to my USBhard drive

You cannot run Win7 from a USB drive. Nothing was said about using a USB drive.

I thought you wanted to delete the D:XP first partition and move C:Win7 into its space.

If so delete XP partition, mark C:Win7 active then move the C: Win7 over into the unallocated space, then use Startup Repair to make it boot.

We have helped many do this here in the past two days. People want to bail out of XP as soon as they see Win7, but it is not so easy.