Win 7 - how to remove XP....

[kenmo]

Hi,

I have three physical hard drives in my Win 7 computer. I installed Win7 Home Premium fine on a separate physical hard drive. Windows XP is installed on a second hard drive. The third hard drive is for data (video recording & dvd authoring)...

Win 7's disk manager will not allow me to delete the XP volume so I can remove it and replace it with a bigger drive. I tried the command line diskpart utility but it too would not allow me to delete the volume as it was in use....

Frustrated I disabled the drive in bios and Win 7 would not load saying the os is missing... Enabling the hard drive in bios at least allowed Win 7 to load...

How do I remove XP from the second hard drive so I can replace it with a bigger drive? How do I enable Win 7 to bootup after I remove the 2nd hard drive?

Thanks kindly....

[aedipuss]

is the xp drive the physical boot drive? as in if you go into the motherboard bios, is it the listed as the boot drive? if so you have part of the os on 2 different drives, even if you told win7 to install onto a different drive, it's still booting from the first boot device. if i were you i'd back up all data and reformat both the xp and win7 drives. then start over with just 1 drive plugged in when you install win7. then plug in the data drive and install the new bigger drive.

[redwudz]

Sounds like W7 automatically set up your system for a dual boot and that info is on both drives. I'd probably do what aedipuss said and start over. Otherwise you would probably have to alter the boot .ini on both drives.

I you had wanted to do a clean install, always best to unplug every HDD but the desired boot drive, especially the ones that have a live OS on them. Then after the W7 OS is running, shut down and add the other drives and you can do what you want with them.

The other way to do it before adding a new OS is to cripple the old XP OS by deleting the Windows files by booting from a Windows PE or Linux live install disc. Or booting from a XP or other OS and repartitioning the drive. You don't have to format, the partitioning wipes the OS from the drive. Then W7 wouldn't see it as a viable OS. With these methods you don't have to unplug any drives. But I find unplugging the drives a lot easier.

Probably other ways to do it, but the simplest is usually the easiest and quickest.

[jagabo]

edit boot.ini?

[kenmo]

I didn't think Win7 used a boot.ini

[redwudz]

I didn't think Win7 used a boot.ini

I don't think they do, but there is likely something similar that directs the BIOS to look for the correct OS file to boot from. If BIOS startup still thinks the XP install is a valid boot option, then W7 probably won't let you delete it. You could try deleting the XP boot.ini, but that would probably give you the same result as disabling the drive in BIOS. I would still just reinstall W7 without the XP drive connected.

To access the XP Boot.ini:
R click on 'My Computer' and select 'Properties', then 'Advanced' tab,
Startup and Recovery 'Settings' button, then 'Edit' button ... you can edit
the boot.ini file from there.

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /usepmtimer

[deadrats]

Hi,

I have three physical hard drives in my Win 7 computer. I installed Win7 Home Premium fine on a separate physical hard drive. Windows XP is installed on a second hard drive. The third hard drive is for data (video recording & dvd authoring)...

Win 7's disk manager will not allow me to delete the XP volume so I can remove it and replace it with a bigger drive. I tried the command line diskpart utility but it too would not allow me to delete the volume as it was in use....

Frustrated I disabled the drive in bios and Win 7 would not load saying the os is missing... Enabling the hard drive in bios at least allowed Win 7 to load...

How do I remove XP from the second hard drive so I can replace it with a bigger drive? How do I enable Win 7 to bootup after I remove the 2nd hard drive?

Thanks kindly....

just so i have everything straight:

1st drive = Win 7

2nd drive = XP

3rd drive = data

desire - have 1st drive as bootable, replace 2nd drive.

this is all very easy to accomplish, temporarily unplug drive 2 and 3, make sure you BIOS is setup to boot from you optical drive first and the 1st hdd second, pop in your win 7 cd, and choose the repair option:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html

launch the command prompt and follow these instructions:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4836283_repair-mbr-windows.html

alternatively you can type "msconfig" (without the quotes) in start->run and try to fix the mbr through that.

basically you setup up a dual boot and since XP was installed first, Win 7 modified XP's mbr, that's why it won't let you delete the XP install and why when you remove the 2nd drive your pc won't boot.

following the directions above you should be able to fix this in a couple of minutes...

[Bjs]

Remove xp to boot win 7 (secondary drive scenario)

Follow torrentg's reply

[kenmo]

Thanks kindly.... I'll try this on the weekend....

At first I did try installing Win 7 on a empty hard drive with the 2nd drive disabled. However when I tried to enter the Windows key code it came up as invalid key code. A google search informed me that if you install the upgrade version of Windows onto a drive without a prior qualifying Windows version, the key code will be rejected as invalid...

I purchased the Home Premium 7 Upgrade (Family Pack - 3 users)....

[jagabo]

A google search informed me that if you install the upgrade version of Windows onto a drive without a prior qualifying Windows version, the key code will be rejected as invalid...

Too late now but... clean install from upgrade version:
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

[kenmo]

Just got home from work and was feeling brave...
So I followed the instructions in the TechRepublic link

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=1751

And everything went fine in the DiskPart utility..

I then typed
Bootrec /fixmbr

Next I typed...
Bootrec /fixboot

Which gave me an error - error element not found...

A quick google turned up a few suggestions but none worked...
Another google turned this up

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
x:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force

(x: beeing the drive letter assigned to your DVD when you boot from the Win7 install disc... My drive was assigned F: )

Rebooted and everything is fine and thanks to the earlier steps in the TechRepublic article XP disk is now empty and can be used for data...

I also ran the EasyBCD utility to remove the Windows Xp option from my boot menu...

Cheers