Not dual boot

[richard64]

I have a removable drive caddy in my PC. Currently the internal disk has Vista 32 and I want to keep it like that for a while (I want to use Win7 for a while before I commit to it). I want to install Win7 on the removable drive, but I do not want to dual boot because sometimes I want to remove that drive and use an Ubuntu drive instead. Note that although the caddy makes a drive removable (ie I can pull it out of the front of the machine) all it does is connect to a SATA connection on the mobo, hence the drive is actually an extra fixed disk.

1) I booted from the win7 DVD and told it to install win7 on the new hard drive. This worked but it edited bcd on the Vista drive to dual boot. I can only boot to win7 through the dual boot menu, if I press F12 at startup and tell my Dell to boot from the win7 disk it says that it cannot load the OS.

2) I disabled the Vista drive in BIOS so that win7 install cannot see it. I repeat #1, but again I find that I cannot boot to the win7 drive.

3) I tried running "boot repair" on the setup disk which said that it had fixed the issue, but clearly hadn't.

So my questions are :

1) Is there another way to install win7 so that it will not dual boot, and will treat the win7 drive as bootable.

2) If it is possible to do that, then is it also possible to 'repair' what I have to do that.

Richard

 

[Pauly]

You may need to run the repair upto three times to make sure it is sucessful cant always repair everything at once.
EasyBCD is a good program for editing boot files to add or remove dual boot options it you want to change it manually
EasyBCD - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

Also make sure the win7 partition is primary and active

Hope this helps

 

[garysgold]

Hello Richard,

Welcome to 7 Forums.

1)When you install 7, unplug the Vista drive, so 7 installs on just that drive. Since the boot files where on the Vista drive, it would no longer boot from anywhere but there.

2)With just the 7 drive in the comp. boot from the 7 DVD an choose repair install. You may have to do this up to 3 times in order to get everything repaired.

Please keep us posted.

Gary

 

[richard64]

Hello Richard,

Welcome to 7 Forums.

1)When you install 7, unplug the Vista drive, so 7 installs on just that drive. Since the boot files where on the Vista drive, it would no longer boot from anywhere but there.

2)With just the 7 drive in the comp. boot from the 7 DVD an choose repair install. You may have to do this up to 3 times in order to get everything repaired.

Please keep us posted.

Gary

Hi Gary, I did do #1 and I could not boot the drive. Since I have not installed anything else, I think I might try it again and format the drive this time. Basically I had a new drive and installed win7 with the Vista disk active, then I tried again with the Vista drive disabled.

At least no one is saying "you cannot do what you are suggesting" so it is worth trying again

UPDATE:

I think I have cracked it.

1) I went into BIOS and disabled all drives except the one that I want to install win7 on.

2) I booted the win7 DVD and went through the install process until I got to the point to select the drive

3) Since the only drive was the one that I wanted to use, I selected it and then clicked the Format option

4) Continued with the install.

5) Once I completed the install I restarted the machine several times to confirm that the win7 disk will boot. Then I went into BIOS and re-enabled the other drives in my machine and restarted the machine several times to see if I could boot the Vista drive and the win7 drive without the dual boot menu.

Now I found that the Vista drive boots by default, and if I want to use the win7 drive I have to use Dell's boot startup option. This is exactly as I want it.

When I am happy with win7 I will physically swap the drives so that win7 is SATA0 and boots by default and Vista is SATA5 and can be swapped in when needed.

 

[garysgold]

What you did is what I was suggesting. Do a clean install with only the Win 7 disk available (Bios or unplug).

I think you could have fixed the install you had on the 7 drive via repair when booting from the dvd.

Glad you got it sorted.

Gary

 

[FuturDreamz]

Use EasyCD to reinstall the mbr, first with the external disk.

 

[gregrocker]

Unplug any other HD besides Win7 target when installing Win7.

If you already dual booted and want out, unplug Vista, run Win7 DVD Repair console>Startup Repair 3 separate times to rewrite the MBR to Win7.

It must be run up to 3 separate times as it assumes given repair will start OS until you return for another fix in list.

 

[Saltgrass]

It is always a good idea to attach, if you can, a disk managment picture of your current status, and a picture of an administrative command prompt after you have typed:
bcdedit

If you set the potential Win 7 drive to the primary drive, first in the drive order (not boot order), it will not see the Vista install. You might be able to do this in the bios, but I have no experience with your setup.