Solved How to remove xp from dual boot with Windows 7

[rogerfour]

Hi Gregg, Just came back from an out of body experience..... everything went great with PW move and resize etc and I created the new partitions for win 8 and a data partition for the balance.
Then I rebooted and the fun started there.... it came up BSOD - so I ran windows repair CD hoping to do the 3 times trick - but it did not fix the problem after about 6 reboots (or more) until it said it could not fix the problem. Then I tried the command prompt bootrec.exe /fixmbr and it still did not work, everytime it booted kept saying it wanted to repair (recommended). I tried quite a while to no avail, until I gave up and did a system image restore - thankfully that worked and I am back where I started. I am sure my pressure went up a few points !! Anyway I am going to get a good nights sleep and maybe wait for any other suggestions. I would still like to achieve this sometime ....... at least I know the system image thingy works.
(I even went back into PW and tried to do a set win boot partition but it said failed to find win directory)?
whew.

 

[gregrocker]

Have never heard of BSOD during PW resizing in hundreds of such operations.

Best to check the HD out at this point. Run maker's extended CD diagnostics/repair scan: HD Diagnostic

Next run Disk Check with repair switch.

 

[rogerfour]

Western digital HD check said Pass - chkdsk /f ran and I got up to answer the phone, but by the time I got back to the keyboard, it had rebooted into Win 7 again so if anything happened I missed it. But all seems well. System is as perky as ever..... !!
Do you think I should make another attempt ? Try another software ? btw I have acronis which I haven't used in about 2 yrs.
However, I will make another system image first... and do it in different order deleting the F partition and leave everything unallocated then do the move/resize of C: and when finished, create the new partitions (not that is should make any difference). What do you think ?

 

[rogerfour]

I should have said when finished moving C: and successfully (hopefully) booting back into win 7 then create the new partitions after all the excitement is finished.

 

[gregrocker]

Try Applying the steps in smaller groups, or after each step. This might help.

 

[rogerfour]

Back again.... after hours of trying - it just won't happen. I did it one step at a time moved C: successfully, rebooted and straight back into BSOD. A process or thread crucial to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated. Booted into safe mode and just when I thought I was getting somewhere - Black screen with white mouse just sat there - tried again with same result.
Went into Repair mode tried 3 times each with the same result cannot repair, cannot repair. Tried the bootrec fixmbr thing again, without success - as I booted into hard drive again - same BSOD same message.
Tried safe mode again and decided to leave it much longer as it said preparing desktop - went for a shower and came back to see the same black screen with white mouse arrow. The mouse was not frozen as I could move the arrow.
at this point I figured it was system image restore once more. and here we are.......
I think I will just leave Win 7 there forever......
Anyway leave well alone.... can I then just install win 8 to a 25gig partition at the front of the drive - any problems foreseen ?? when win 8 is eventually stable in future 2012 - I guess I can then thrash win 7 at that point ? and win 8 will still be at the front of the drive hopefully.
Man I'm tired !! but I can't help thinking that there must be a way........ it all seems so simple.

 

[gregrocker]

You are using the Partiiton Wizard bootable CD, right?

Please upload your BSOD information to our Crashes forum for expert analysis: Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Posting Instructions - Windows 7 Forums

It needs to be determined with certainty what caused the BSOD.

I would want a larger partition than 25gb to install Win8, although it depends upon how many programs you're installing and whether you leave/access your files on the Win7 partition.

 

[rogerfour]

Greg, Yes - using the latest version free PW bootable cd ISO.
Ok so I downloaded and followed all the instructions in the BSOD link but I am afraid nothing came out of the jcgriff query program - I guess the reason is maybe because I had unchecked everything in the system failure section a long time ago no dumps and no reports!!
I searched the whole computer for that generated file and it does not show up anywhere, although the dos window suggested that it was sort of doing something.
Even Perfmon /report did not succeed I don't know why
Error:

An error occured while attempting to generate the report.

The wait for the report generation tool to finish has timed out.
I ran it twice..... same result.

I guess this will remain a mystery for now, unless I turn on system startup, failure and debugging and do it all over again - I'm not really ready for that repeat experience right now - I may be pushing my luck too far with system image restore. I remember when I first came on here in 2009 you had advised that I should not install Win7 on a logical partition (but I had already done it unfortunately). But it was working okay and we decided to leave it alone. Maybe from the very beginning this move was doomed to failure.
I guess the only real way to sort it out is to re-install Win 7 to the front of the drive !! but I don't think I can even think about that right now..... I have too much software to recover and to do it all over again.... Only if a real disaster happens then I will be forced into it.... but then I may still yet have to do a complete reinstall because of my planned 1155 motherboard/processor/mem upgrade/rebuild - hopefully a gift from Santa it looks like I have to exchange an arm and 2 legs for this hehee. only a few more months to go.
I will prepare myself mentally well in advance before this is due to happen as I plan to go 64bit so my 32bit win7 system will be dead anyway - right?
But thanks for the helping hand that you have always extended so willingly.
This is not my last appearance on win 7 forum !!

 

[rogerfour]

Oh and I will go ahead an install Win 8 on a 50gb partition at the front of the drive.

 

[gregrocker]

When you get around to it I'd clean reinstall Win7 following my steps to get a Perfect Reinstall then don't turn off any of the System resources to beggar problems down the line.

 

[rogerfour]

Greg, my system bombed out totally and was down for over a week now - just got it going again this weekend..... I lost win 7 and win 8 !! could not boot at all from the HD - I thought that I had worn out the repair cd because I tried so many times to restore win 7 !! I wiped the drive clean and tried to re-install win 7 but it would not work period - I began to suspect the HDD but that wasn't the case. Then I was thinking motherboard hmmm but no.
Anyway the problem all the time was a bad memory stick, 1 out of the 2 ddrs seemed to have been the problem and in retrospect I think this was causing the BSODs when I tried moving the partition a couple weeks ago to the front of the drive with PW. It would not even re-install windows 7 properly and it kept going back for the cd as soon as the install said it was finished.... it refused to drop through to the HD - over and over again.

Anyway I got a new 1gb stick to match the other one, cleaned the drive again and just did an image restore of Win 7 - luckily all my backup images are on another drive - the repair cd found the image(s) and brought me right back to where I was - with win 7 in the original position in the middle of the drive witout losing a byte !
I want to rejoice for another couple of weeks before I attempt to re-install win 8 Dev again.... and hopefully this time there won't be any problems I decided to keep win 7 where it is and put win 8 at the front of the drive as I will probably run with this whenever it is released officially.
The most important file on my entire system now is the Win 7 image protected with my life !!
Thanks for listening.

 

[gregrocker]

Of course! This would explain how you got a BSOD during PW resizing reboot, when it's committed to memory.

We'll have to remember to test RAM in all of these cases where we test HD, as a matter of course.

It would probably have been spotted if the BSOD dump file had been posted to our Crashes forum for analysis. Do that in all such cases in the future.

Good on you for having backup image on the secondary HD, the modern way!

 

[bartekxx12]

Windows Logo + R

type in "msconfig"

go to the "boot" tab

there will be a list of operating systems you're loading

delete all the ones except from the one you want which will probably be set as "current".

hit apply and restart the computer,

windows 7 should be loaded without any other dual boot screens.

Then you can do whatever you want to the partitions...