Solved Remove XP dual boot

[thecolin]

I'm trying to remove a dual boot of XP (the D drive on the screenshot) on a single HD and expand the space for my windows 7 installation. It doesn't seem to be possible to do it directly through disk management.

I have a copy of EasyBCD installed and a copy of the partition wizard bootable CD burned, but I'm not sure how to proceed and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing to mess around with casually.

Alternatively, if that isn't possible, if someone could provide some advice on joining the unallocated space into the C drive, that would be an workable alternative.

 

[AddRAM]

It won`t let you delete it because it is marked active and contains the system files, if you delete it, Windows 7 won`t boot.

If you don`t have a Windows 7 Installation DVD, make a system repair disc before you go any further, you will need it to get 7 booting again.

start>control panel>backup and restore>create system repair disc.

Who installed W7 on a logical drive ? It should be made Primary. ( in my opinion )

Ideally, you want D, the unallocated space and C to be 1 entire Primary partition.

You are wasting speed by having C in the middle of the drive like that.

 

[bassfisher6522]

Everything I've read say's you must format that partition that has the dual boot up OS on it.

 

[thecolin]

It won`t let you delete it because it is marked active and contains the system files, if you delete it, Windows 7 won`t boot.

If you don`t have a Windows 7 Installation DVD, make a system repair disc before you go any further, you will need it to get 7 booting again.

So I should force windows to delete the partition then recover from the system disc?

Ideally, you want D, the unallocated space and C to be 1 entire Primary partition.

That's what I'm attempting to achieve, the people I bought the system from set it up like this.

 

[AddRAM]

Like I said, windows won`t let you, you`ll have to use Partition Wizard. I recommend doing it with the boot cd.

Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to manage partition directly with partition manager bootable CD.

You will then have to run the repair disc up to 3x to get windows booting again. There should be tutorials on it.

 

[gregrocker]

As your boot files are on D, you must move them to C so that Win7 can boot itself after correctly removing XP by deleting D. But C is Logical which cannot be marked Active to accept the boot files, so you must first convert it to Primary. Here's how:

Boot free Partition Wizard bootable CD, rightclick C to Modify>Set to Primary, click OK.

Rightclick C again to Modify>Set to Active, click OK.

Now click on the HD # to highlight it, from Disk tab select Rebuild MBR, OK, Apply all steps.

Reboot, if Win7 doesn't start then boot into Win7 installer or System Repair Disk to run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times until Win7 starts and C wears the System Active Boot flags.

Now you can back up D files, boot into PW CD, rightclick D to Delete, OK, then rightlclick C again to Resize, drag left border all the way to left to take up the deleted D space, OK, Apply. Partition Wizard Resize Partition Video Help. Be prepared to run repairs again after resizing on the boot sector (in about 5% cases).

If there are any other changes you'd now like to make, post back another Disk Mgmt screenshot and tell us which. You can also adjust the size of any partition using the cool new PW Extend function which can take/give from any other partition.

 

[thecolin]

...Here's how...

Awesome, worked like a charm, cheers!