Removing Windows 7 from the Primary partition of a Dual Boot system.

[Mick47]

I have two partitions on my HDD. A 'suspect' Windows 7 Home (that originally came with my 'refurbished' second hand laptop) is installed in the only Primary partition. A legitimate copy of Windows 7 Professional is (now) installed in an Extended Logical partition. My laptop boots up in Windows 7 Professional, if no other selection is made. I now wish to remove the suspect installation, and revert to having just one partition containing my Windows 7 Professional, without formatting the whole HDD and reinstallng/restoring everything currently on the second, logical partition. Is this possible, and if so, how?

 

[Megahertz07]

What kind of BIOS you have? UEFI or Legacy (MBR)?
Can you give us a snapshot of disk manager?
Do you have a external HDD to make a backup image of your Win 7 pro partition?

 

[torchwood]

Hi Mick,
The easy way make a system image of your Pro set-up, using macrium or Acronis, both free.
Then just install it as a new but with only 1 partition

If you want to check the validity of your home premium, run this copy/paste the output
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=52012
note that comp would have come with W7 home if its 4+ years old.

Roy

 

[AddRAM]

However you do it, W7 has to be installed on a Primary Partition, or you at least have to have a System Reserved partition remaining when you wipe the suspect W7 install, if not you`ll have to run a startup repair to get W7 booting again. And a startup repair does not always work.

Post a shot of Disk Management before making any changes.

 

[Mick47]

Removing Windows 7 from the Primary partition of a Dual Boot system

Reply to Megahertz
"What kind of BIOS do you have? UEFI or Legacy (MBR)?
Can you give us a snapshot of disk manager?
Do you have a external HDD to make a backup image of your Win 7 pro partition?[/QUOTE]"

Until yesterday I had never heard of UEFI or GPT so I'm assuming that I'm using BIOS/MBR.
Disk Manager snapshot attached.
Yes I do have an external HDD.

 

[Mick47]

Reply to:
"Hi Mick,
The easy way is to make a system image of your Pro set-up, using macrium or Acronis, both free.
Then just install it as new but with only 1 partition

If you want to check the validity of your home premium, run this copy/paste the output
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=52012
note that computer would have come with W7 home if its 4+ years old.

Roy"

Thanks Roy,
I was rather hoping to be able to do something 'simpler' like erasing/formatting the Primary partition (without deleting it) and then merging it with the other partition (using Partition Master), because I've never successfully restored anything using the Windows Backup process, and recently Backup has refused to work anyway (I'm now using EaseUS Todo). I'll investigate Macrium and/or Acronis.

I wasn't bothered about the 'suspect' Windows 7 (which Mocrosoft has already 'rejected' as not being genuine), as I already had a legitimate 64 bit Windows 7 Pro CD that I purchased to upgrade my laptop from the 32 bit Vista it came with.

Mick

 

[Mick47]

Removing Windows 7 from the Primary partition of a Dual Boot system

Reply to:
AddRAM
"However you do it, W7 has to be installed on a Primary Partition, or you at least have to have a System Reserved partition remaining when you wipe the suspect W7 install, if not you`ll have to run a startup repair to get W7 booting again. And a startup repair does not always work.

Post a shot of Disk Management before making any changes."

I'm not sure about the creation/use of System Reserved partitions, but will investigate. My reason for asking for help is that I don't trust the Windows Backup/Restore process or their so called Startup Repair disk as I've never had any success with either, but thanks for the warning anyway.

Snapshot of Disk Manager attached.

Mick

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Not sure what is on D partition but the boot..... is all on C partition so that might be your 7 pro install.
Click Start and type in the search box
msconfig
Hit the enter key
On the boot section see if C say win-7 pro or not and is default os.
If it does you can format the D partition or out an out delete it into unallocated space.

You can move the os all the way to the left using free mini tool
Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Although not sure why the C partition is tagged as Logical

 

[DavidE]

In Windows Disk Management
- The BOOT partition is where Windows is installed and running from, it can be Primary or Logical.
- The SYSTEM, ACTIVE partition is where the bootloader is, it must be Primary.

For Legacy BIOS / MBR the only partition that needs to be Primary is where the bootloader is.
A Windows OS can be installed on a Logical partition.
The Windows partition can have the Windows OS and the bootloader, and i think that is what the OP wants. If the [D] partition is deleted now, Windows will not startup. Before the [D] partition can be deleted, the bootloader needs to be moved to [C], and [C] must be a Primary Active partition. Also, there is very little free space now on C or D. Less than 10% free space can cause problems, some things may not work correctly, if at all. @Mick47 Can you get and attach a larger drive to your laptop ? I would get a larger drive and "migrate" the Win 7 Pro to the new drive. That way, you don't make any changes to the current drive, until you know everything works on the new drive. You would have to be able to replace the current drive with a new drive for this approach to work. I don't know how easy or possible that is with your laptop, or your hardware experience. If you can't "Build/Migrate" to a new larger drive, it gets complicated and risky, making these changes to your current drive. Make sure you have backup (images) of your current drives before making any changes. Backup to an external drive using the program you trust such as EaseUS Todo, Macrium, etc.

 

[Megahertz07]

Mick, as you're going to work on the disk, you MUST have a backup of your files before you begin.
Your system is legacy - MBR
Partitions only expand to a free space to the right. You will have to make an image of your Win 7 Pro partition, delete the partition, expand the first partition to the end, format the drive, restore the Win 7 pro image and run boot repair.
As your Win 7 pro partition is bigger than the other, you just can't copy one partition to the other.

This is what I would do:
- I recommend to use AOMEI Backupper- Best Free Backup Software for Windows 10, Windows 8.1/8, Windows 7, Vista, XP
- Make a backup of your files on an external HDD.
- If you use bitlocker, you must unlock all the Win 7 Pro drive.
- Under Win 7 Home, make an image of your Win 7 Pro partition on the external HDD. As you may have some problems on copying a working drive, I suggest you do under Win 7 home. Create a bootable disk of your image program. Test if it boots.
- Under Win 7 Home, go to disk manager and delete Win 7 pro partition (logical) and extend the active partition (win 7 Home) to the end of the drive.
- Boot from the image program disk, format the whole disk and restore the image of your Win 7 Pro partition.
- With the Win 7 installation disk, repair boot loader.

 

[Mick47]

Removing Windows 7 from the Primary partition of a Dual Boot system

Thanks Everyone: Megahertz07, DavidE, Thrash Zone, AddRAM, & Torchwood.

For lots of helpful, if sometimes conflicting , advice which I'm trying to 'absorb'.

The reason for my desire to remove the Windows 7 Home partition was to increase space for the legitimate Windows 7 Pro OS on the C: partition. As someone who is old enough to remember my college's first multiuser 'mainframe' which had 2Mb of RAM and 40Mb of disk storage (yes, M for Mega!) and occupied a room bigger than an average double bedroom, it never ceases to amaze me how profligate Windows is with memory, and the excessive amount it needs to run in a half way decent manner.

Anyway, I've purchased a new external hard drive (rather than spending time clearing out old back-ups from my existing one), and am in the process of ensuring I've got a restorable backup of the Windows 7 Pro partition. I won't be posting again on this thread until I've achieved my aim.

PS I've also read the tutorials on this site concerned with this issue, and whilst finding them helpful too, they don't seem to address exactly the same 'problem' that I have, so I will report back on what I do next, and what was successful, in due course.

Mick

 

[Megahertz07]

You should have bought a SSD and put your actual HDD into a external USB case. SSD is about 6 times faster than HDD. It boot in seconds rather in minutes. You have no idea on how your laptop will get a speed increase. I've just bought a SSD for my old laptop at Bestbuy PNY CS1311 120GB Internal SATA Solid State Drive Black SSD7CS1311-120-RB - Best Buy