Delete Vista / Dual Boot Leaving Windows 7 - Separate HDDs
Mar 12, 2012
I would like to remove Vista from my dual boot setup. Here is how I got to where I am now.
I had Vista installed on my PC hard drive (was C. Later, I decided to install Windows 7 HP on a new and seperate HDD. I unplugged the Vista HDD and added the new HDD and installed Windows 7 as if from scratch (I was worried that the install would mess up all my files on Vista). After the Windows 7 was up and running, I then reconnected Vista redesignated it as drive E: and after some searching on how to, I created the dual boot using my Windows 7 disk so I'm assuming the boot file in on drive C: along with Windows 7.
I now want delete the dual boot and Vista so I can use the drive as a backup drive or possibly Win8. I have found several methods to do this but none that really have my specific situation.
I've done some searching for this and found some similar issues but nothing fits exactly what I'm trying to do. I have been running Vista Ult. 64 bit for a little over a year and have loved it. It solved all the problems I had with XP Pro 32 bit on my hardware. I bought 7 Pro 64 bit through www.theultimatesteal.com since I'm taking some night classes. I forgot I couldn't upgrade from Ult.
to Pro so I had to do a clean install, which I did, on a separate drive. I have five drives in my system, C, D, and E are all 1TB while F and G are 1.5TB. C is where Vista is installed and G is where 7 is located. I'll be going back and forth between the OS's until I get everything the way I want it.
At that point I want to remove Vista and have 7 be the only OS. But I do not want to migrate the install onto the 1TB C: drive, I want to keep it on the 1.5TB drive but have it recognized as the C: drive. The install was done from within Vista from the download since my physical media has not yet arrived. So even when I boot into 7, it is seen as being installed on the G: drive; it did not make itself the C: drive.
So I'll need to get rid of Vista, get 7 to see itself as being the C: drive, get rid of the boot menu, and swap the drives and cables around to put my 7 install at the head of the HDD pack. I've already done a full system backup of my Vista install with Acronis TIH 2010. How do I need to go about this? On another note; why did MS only offer home and pro through ultimate steal? They offered Vista Ultimate. I mean, it is called ULTIMATE steal, not Pro steal afterall, and it would have made the upgrade process that much easier.
I want to combine my 2 desktops into one, since I never use both together and the older one is very dated by now (think Time/tiny computers old). My current machine is an Asus P5Q-E with a C2D and has one HDD on a SATA connection running windows 7 64bit. The old computer is a single core Athlon 2700+ thing with a pair of hard drives on a single IDE ribbon.What I want to do is put the hard drives from the old machine into the newer and be able to choose between Windows XP already installed on the old master IDE hard drive and Windows 7 on the newer SATA drive (I've only kept the old computer to run XP for compatibility), all the while keeping the old slave IDE drive as a slave.
When booted to 7 Disk Management shows the partition of 7 as C: (Boot,Page File Crash Dump, Logical Drive) and the Vista partition as D: (System, Active Primary Partition). Now I would like to remove the Vista partition and merge that to the 7 partition. I have searched around and have read many options of doing this but I can not find a definitive way of completing this.
I have got two separate hard drives one running Windows 7 one running xp. I need to be able to chose which os to run but currently I can only do so by pressing F12. I have tried EasyBCD but it wont work - does anyone know how I can do this?
I'm new around here so, if you've seen this before, please bear with me.I have a computer with 3 hard disks in it as follows.Patriot Pyro 120 GB on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (installed first).WD Velociraptor 450 GB on Windows 8 Pro x64 (installed second).Samsung something 2 TB storage (forget about this one).The 2 operating systems are completely independent and functioning properly; obviously, the SSD (Pyro) is set to boot first in the bios and, at start-up, there's no boot manager asking me which OS I intend to use. Basically, every time I want to logon on my Velociraptor with Windows 8 I have to press F8 at start-up and choose from the given list of bootable HDDs.Now, I've tried EasyBCD without luck and I've read somewhere that, apparently, the Windows 7 boot manager can't boot a Windows 8 partition so, my question is, is there a way to add my Windows 8 Velociraptor to the boot manager of the first booting HDD, i.e the SSD with Windows 7?
I currently have Windows 7 installed on two separate drives in my box. I can only set (select) boot sequence in the BIOS. If I recall correctly, way back when a boot selection menu would appear when I think I was running Windows 7 (when it first came out) alongside XP but that screen no longer appears with my current setup. Is there a way to get that screen back, or an alternate way to select the OS of choice without the hassle?
I have separate ide drives one is installed with XP Pro and the other with windows 7. I want to have the choice of either os when the pc boots i.e. choose the drive to boot the pc.
I have Window XP installed on Drive C:. My son installed Windows 7 on Drive E:. However, when the computer is booted up, it boots up in Windows 7, without allowing a choice. I suspect this can be corrected in BIOS, but don't want to screw it up.
My computer has windows 7. I created a separate partition on my hard drive to install windows xp, but now when I try to install it I get an chkdsk /f error.
My system dual boots to either Windows 7 or Vista Ultimate, or, at least it is supposed to. Something happened and now the system just boots to Winodows 7 without giving me the choice to boot to either. When I use F6 I find that only Windows 7 is listed in the Operating Systems box.
Is there an easy way to dual boot on separate drives, i have installed windows 7 on 1 drive & vista on another. This was done independenly on the same machine as to say put vista on last year the got another hard drive took the vista drive out put new hard drive in & installed windows 7.I connected both. they see each other.I have read lots about reinstall one OS but nothing on if its already installed. IS THERE AWAY?
New laptop has Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. I have two business programs that won't run on a 64bit system. Partitioned the hard drive to install Vista Home Premium 32bit to create a dual boot system solely to run these two programs.Can't get Vista to load. Followed tutorial meticulously. All goes fine until the "Vista will boot for the first time" step. After this first boot, the screen returns to the "completing installation" page. However, the process dies here and the progress bar across the bottom of the screen never moves, even after an hour. Reformatted the partition and started over with same results. Multiple attempts always die after the first boot.
I have read that using a computer specifically for financial transactions with known and trusted entities (such as a bank) is a good way to reduce (though not eliminate) the risk of your accounts being hacked by reducing the likelihood of inadvertently installing a malware, spyware, or virus by reducing internet sites visited. Assuming this is correct, I was wondering about dual booting one computer with two physical hard drives (each with its own OS) versus one hard drive with two partitions. I figure the former would be "more secure" since one drive would be isolated from any unwanted programs. However, since they shared a few things (motherboard and such), is this set up as "secure" as having two computers? If so, how does one go about setting up a dual boot with two separate hard drives of the same operating system using one computer?
I have two drives (C and D) with Vista on one and Win 7 on the other (not sure if they're actual drives or partitions of a single drive, how do I tell?). I am dual booting and never use Vista. Starting to need the disk space and want to delete Vista. Is this difficult in this scenario?
I had recently installed windows 7 on my laptop running windows vista. I did not remove the existing windows vista installation, and thus win 7 was installed in a dual boot combination. Now, i want to remove vista from my laptop and use windows 7 only.The problem is that during installation, win 7 was installed on logical drive and windows vista was on the primary drive. Thus, i cannot delete/format the windows vista partition. Also I cannot transfer the boot drive to the partition containing win 7 because the vista partition is the active one.
I want to install 7 on a separate hard drive to see how it works & work indepenantly on it's own system. How can I if at all make it so when I am booting up I can toggle in between 7 & xp startups.
i have xp home 32 bit as my OS now and i have another hard drive installed and ready to install win 7 64 bit on to. can i do this with xp running or should i disconnect the HD with xp on it, then when i start the computer it won't see any OS and then i could boot from the win7 dvd and do a clean installl and then re=connect the HD with xp on it.
then when i start computer i should get the choice of which one to boot from or is this not the way to do it?? i want the OS's on separate HD's for now as i am sure that not everything that i want to run will work on the 64 bit win7 until i can afford to get all the programs i use to work on win7.
I currently have windows 7 ultimate in a Dell Gx270 P4 2.6ghz I know its old. And i want to Install Windows XP in another hard drive i have, but how do i make both hard drives boot, so i can select which one i want to boot.
I'm doing this because XP mode doesn't work in this computer. And i don't want to partition.
Most information i find in google requires partitioning and i don't want that.
If you know how please post it, or post the Links where i can find it.
I admit to being clueless when it comes to dual booting. I already have 7 X64 on my C: drive and a completely blank internal, formatted D: drive. How do I go about installing Windows 8 on drive D: and setting it up to dual boot?
I installed Windows 7 on a partitioned harddrive with vista on the other half. After the installation i have my boot menu with:Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows vista still works but when i try and load windows 7 i get a boot error message
I have a common problem, which I see has afflicted many (wish I had read the forum b4 venturing forth). I have a Win XP SP3 install working on the C drive. No problems there and working for over a year. I wanted to set up a dual boot Win 7 on a separate disk. No problem in the installation.
When I went to boot the system I realised that the install had changed the XP install because when I removed the Win 7 HDD my old system would not boot. I now realise that I have to use the two HDDs in tandem to have a working dual boot, which is not what I had wanted.
Another silly mistake made was that I didn't set a restore point when setting out as I thought I was being careful in installing Win 7 on a separate HDD. Now I realise that theWin 7 boot loader has overwritten the old boot.ini file. Without a restore point how do I get back to a working Win XP boot.
I am wanting to return to old state and install Win 7 again, but this time disconnecting the Win XP drive. The system will detect a new formatted blank drive only and hopefully set up a stand alone Win 7 installation.
Am I making sense and more importantly can it be done given I didn't set a restore point on my Win XP installation before setting out? I have read in forums that in Win XP I can go to the boot.ini file via msconfig and manually make some alterations to make the dual boot go back to only booting the Xp install.
I have dualboot XP SP3 and Vista Ultimate on my system,,and now i want to install Windows 7 over the XP OS. I wish to keep Vista with Windows 7 without reinstalling Vista.
Can I just install Windows 7 over XP , or should i be careful for MBR,or boot....
I have windows XP and Windows 7 (Dual Boot). I want to delete windows 7 from it as my computer becomes really laggy. I have Pentium D as processor with 2 GB DDR2 RAM.
I first installed WinXP on the first partition of hard disk - drive C:. After that I installed Windows 7 on a new created 4. partition of the HD. When I start Windows 7 using boot menue, drive C: ist now for Windows 7 and D: is for WinXP with following status displayed by disk managment:
Because I dont need WinXP anymore, can I delete the partition of C: and install instead a new linux OS on it? Will D: automatically be the system and active drive?
I was wondering if it's possible to run windows 7 along with Vista (64bit). My current computer has 4 drives setup in a RAID configuration and i am wanting to add a new drive which I could run Windows 7 on.
I got an issue were i have to install windows 7.Currently i have an Dell inspiron 1721 laptop with windows vista.Problem is there is a lot of data on my machine and i dont want to format and fresh install i would like to dual boot is there a way to do this?How would you guys suggest i do this without messing up my windows vista.What programs do i need what steps do i need to take.
