Removing Dual Boot

[BillS22]

Is it possible to stop dual booting without formatiing my harddrive?

My boot splash screen order is:
Windows 7
Windows Vista

I want to delete my WindowsOLD direcorty and boot to Win 7 only.
Win 7 and Vista are on the same partition.

Thanks,
Bill

 

[sup3rsprt]

Yes it's possible. You just need to remove the boot screen entry for Vista using something like EasyBCD.

 

[nate42nd]

You should be able to use "startup and recovery" or "msconfig" and make the OS you want to use default...

Then go to disk management and delete that partition and extend your "C" into the free space. This is what I intend to do.

 

[BillS22]

Thanks. EASYBCD fixe the problem.

 

[nate42nd]

I need to take a look at that program. I have been able to get by without it but it sure seems to help a lot of people.

Glad you got it sorted out. Have a good one.

 

[mpkelley20]

I have a similar issue. I have 3 hard drives. One with Win 7, one with Vista and one with XP. My computer skips the splash screen when booting up and goes directly to 7 (which is what I want) but when I try to format my Vista drive (haven't tried XP yet) I get a message saying I can't format it.

Under disc management, it tells me it is due to system partion on the Vista drive. Not sure why anything is being used on the Vista drive when booting onto my & drive as I did a clean install.

I went to msconfig, removed Vista from boot up, restarted my system but still get that error message. All I want to do is format the dang drive with Vista on it.

Any ideas?

 

[BillS22]

Try EasyBCD. The 3ard or 4th tab has a screen where you can delete the splash screen entries. You want to delete all but Windows 7.
Re-boot and see if that fixes your problem.

 

[torrentg]

I have a similar issue. I have 3 hard drives. One with Win 7, one with Vista and one with XP. My computer skips the splash screen when booting up and goes directly to 7 (which is what I want) but when I try to format my Vista drive (haven't tried XP yet) I get a message saying I can't format it.

Under disc management, it tells me it is due to system partion on the Vista drive. Not sure why anything is being used on the Vista drive when booting onto my & drive as I did a clean install.

I went to msconfig, removed Vista from boot up, restarted my system but still get that error message. All I want to do is format the dang drive with Vista on it.

Any ideas?

You need to move your boot files off of Vista partition before you can format it. Windows is being smart for you and not letting you. It knows you can not boot without it.

It is quite easy to move boot files and have your system boot from elsewhere. If you want help to do this, post a screenshot of disk management. I'd tell you how and the commands, but I want to absolutely sure I understand your setup first.

You will then go into bios and choose another HDD as first boot device, after we move the files to it.

 

[mpkelley20]

Here is the screen print. I tried re-ordering my drives in the BIOS without moving the files and that's when I realized that Win 7 was using a boot file from my vista drive. I'm glad there is an easy way to move the files around.

 

[torrentg]

First, make sure you can view hidden and system files in Windows Explorer (Computer.) In Windows Explorer, Organize, folder and search options. View tab to do so.

Copy and paste bootmgr file from E: to C:
Copy and paste boot folder from E: to C: telling it to skip over copying bcd and bcd.log when it asks.

Run this command from an elevated command prompt:

bcdedit /export C:\boot\bcd

Go into C:\boot in Windows Explorer and see that bcd file is now in there. If so, reboot into bios and change the first boot device to your C: drive.

Boot to Windows 7 and look at disk management again. C: should now also be the system partition as well as all that it previously was.

If that's all correct and well, you can now format your E:

 

[mpkelley20]

First, make sure you can view hidden and system files in Windows Explorer (Computer.) In Windows Explorer, Organize, folder and search options. View tab to do so.

Copy and paste bootmgr file from E: to C:
Copy and paste boot folder from E: to C: telling it to skip over copying bcd and bcd.log when it asks.

Run this command from an elevated command prompt:

bcdedit /export C:\boot\bcd

Go into C:\boot in Windows Explorer and see that bcd file is now in there. If so, reboot into bios and change the first boot device to your C: drive.

Boot to Windows 7 and look at disk management again. C: should now also be the system partition as well as all that it previously was.

If that's all correct and well, you can now format your E:

.


Before I move forward with this, couple of questions. I assume that all of the files I am copying from E to C are supposed to go to the same folder location. In other words, my bootmgr file is located in E:\windows\boot\PCAT so I would copy it to C:\windows\boot\PCAT?

Since both directories exist on my two drives, I want to make sure before I replace the boot files on C.

And since my bootmgr file is located in the E directory mentioned above, I assume I just have to copy the entire folder rather than do it separately?

Once I do that, I assume I just go into my command prompt to do the next step. When I go into my command prompt it starts me at C:\User\Computername> Is that fine to type your command (I rarely use the command prompt).

I'm fine with the rest but just wanted to verify before I fry my computer!

Thanks for your help!!

 

[mpkelley20]

As a quick follow up, I backed up my boot folder on my C drive and then tried copying my E boot folder but it was very difficult as it kept saying I needed permission and some files could not be changed.

Thinking that maybe I could just run the command prompt change (since all the necessary boot files seemed to be on my C drive anyway) I tried to type the command you gave me. Im my command prompt with it in the folder mentioned above, I had the following line

C:\User\Computername>bcdedit/export\C:\boot\bcd

I got the following message "the store export operation has failed. Access is denied"

I think I took your easy solution and messed it up somehow. I'm usuallu very good with computers but this task is killing me!

 

[gregrocker]

I have a similar issue. I have 3 hard drives. One with Win 7, one with Vista and one with XP. My computer skips the splash screen when booting up and goes directly to 7 (which is what I want) but when I try to format my Vista drive (haven't tried XP yet) I get a message saying I can't format it.

Under disc management, it tells me it is due to system partion on the Vista drive. Not sure why anything is being used on the Vista drive when booting onto my & drive as I did a clean install.

I went to msconfig, removed Vista from boot up, restarted my system but still get that error message. All I want to do is format the dang drive with Vista on it.

Any ideas?

Is Windows 7 drive marked Active in Disk Management? If not it means that Vista contains the boot files which explains why you cannot delete it. Try marking Win7 active, reboot and see if it starts up. If not boot into the Win7 installer Repair console and run Startup Repair 3 times.

If you can't mark it active in DM, unplug all drives but Win7, boot into Partition Wizard, mark Win7 partition active and run startup repair on Win7 3 times to rewrite the boot.

After it starts up, plug in the Vista drive, Delete/Create/Format it with Disk Management or other disk management software., then repeat with XP drive.

If it still won't delete, unplug all drives except problem drive and boot from Dban or GWScan to write zeros over the drives. That'll show em.

 

[torrentg]

C:\User\Computername>bcdedit/export\C:\boot\bcd

You need to leave a space after bcdedit. No \ after export. You can copy and paste this into it. It will work as long as you copied the boot folder to root of C:\

bcdedit /export C:\boot\bcd

It doesn't matter where you get the bootmgr from. Make sure it is copied to C:\ though. So you want bootmgr and boot folder both at root of C:\.
If you do something wrong, nothing is damaged because your original booting is intact.

 

[mpkelley20]

I have a similar issue. I have 3 hard drives. One with Win 7, one with Vista and one with XP. My computer skips the splash screen when booting up and goes directly to 7 (which is what I want) but when I try to format my Vista drive (haven't tried XP yet) I get a message saying I can't format it.

Under disc management, it tells me it is due to system partion on the Vista drive. Not sure why anything is being used on the Vista drive when booting onto my & drive as I did a clean install.

I went to msconfig, removed Vista from boot up, restarted my system but still get that error message. All I want to do is format the dang drive with Vista on it.

Any ideas?

Is Windows 7 drive marked Active in Disk Management? If not it means that Vista contains the boot files which explains why you cannot delete it. Try marking Win7 active, reboot and see if it starts up. If not boot into the Win7 installer Repair console and run Startup Repair 3 times.

If you can't mark it active in DM, unplug all drives but Win7, boot into Partition Wizard, mark Win7 partition active and run startup repair on Win7 3 times to rewrite the boot.

After it starts up, plug in the Vista drive, Delete/Create/Format it with Disk Management or other disk management software., then repeat with XP drive.

If it still won't delete, unplug all drives except problem drive and boot from Dban or GWScan to write zeros over the drives. That'll show em.

This was the problem! Made the drive active and then did a repair (only had to do it once). No issues booting into Win 7 and I was able to easily format the old drive with Vista on it (good riddance!!!). I had tried repair beofre but I was not aware that my drive was not listed as active in disc management. A missing step from my original attemps!

Thank you everyone who helped. Even if every solution didn't work, I learned a lot about things I didn't know how to do prior to this issue. Love Windows 7 so far!!!

 

[yorkman]

bootmgr

This is an old thread but you said:

Copy and paste bootmgr file from E: to C:
Copy and paste boot folder from E: to C: telling it to skip over copying bcd and bcd.log when it asks.

What if I don't have bootmgr? Yes, I have hidden files and system files all viewable and I can boot into Win'7 no problem.

I'm using EasyBCD already which may be the reason. I do have boot.ini, ntdetect and ntldr on my E:\ drive. My C:\ drive (Win'7) has bootsqm.dat and a NST folder holding only ntldr. I'm trying to get XP on my Sabertooth X79 with Win'7x64 already installed and it's the biggest challenge I've ever had. I've slipstreamed my SATA and RAID drivers on the XP x64 cd and they work but for the life of me I can't get it to install to my Intel controller which is RAID10. When XP brings up my partitions the raid drive I can't select, says it's Not Accessible or something like that. I've done this before many times on my other pc, no problems.