Howto eliminate dual start

I have a dual start up XP and Win7 with 2 drives I would like to take the drive with XP out and only have Win on the machine what is the best way?

Bob

 

Some additional info please - a screenshot of disk management. In Win 7 right click Computer > Manage > Disk Management and use the Snipping Tool for your screenshot. Take care to ensure all the info in both top and bottom halves is clear and legible. This is necessary in order to do this in such a way that you will still be able to boot Win 7 after removing XP.

 

I not sure if this what you want

 

Click on the Manage Disks link so that both of the drives show in the window. Example att'd.

 

No, that's from Help and Support Robert. I've given you a click-by-click, not sure how I can make it any simpler :confused Start by clicking Start and then pick up my instructions above.

Removing XP from a dual boot needs to be done in a particular way if boot problems are to be avoided.

 

OK, I've sussed what you have done. The only right click is the first, on Computer. The rest are left clicks.

 

You told me to right click which I did.

I right clicked the first one and then left clicked the rest and got this.

 

Thanks, that's what we need. There are several ways we can go about this but first, in Win 7, I want you to download and burn to CD Partition Wizard Bootable CD. Just download the file to desktop, right click it and click Burn disc image. Test that you can boot to the CD before going any further. Also please confirm to me that you do have a Win 7 installation disk which, since you have a dual boot, I believe you will have. We may need these later if anything goes wrong.

With all that done, click Start > Computer > Organize > Folder and Search Options > View tab > uncheck Hide Protected Operating System Files > Yes > Apply > close the dialog box.

Now browse to drive D:, the XP drive, where you should see a folder named Boot and a file named bootmgr. Copy both to the root of drive C:, the Win 7 drive. Finally, go back into disk management and right click C: and click Mark Partition as Active.

That should fix it. On the next boot you should no longer be offered the choice of XP or Win 7 and hopefully it will boot straight into 7. If everything is OK you can clear drive D: and use it for data. Finally you should recheck Hide Protected Operating System Files.

Hope all goes smoothly.

 

EDIT - also go into BIOS and change the boot order so that the Win 7 drive, the 500GB drive, is first in the boot order, or second if the DVD drive is first.

 

We are hampered by an 8 hour time difference here so we probably only have three or four hours each day to exchange info but if you want to see this through I will stay with it. Let me know though if you don't want to proceed.

 

I don't have Partition Wizard but I do have Disk Director Suite 10.0 CD

Will that do?

Plus I am 84 year old Geezer and I would like to get it right the first time.

Thanking you for your patients.

Bob

 

Disk Director 10 should do just fine as long as you know how to use it, 'cos I don't. The most I expect to have to do with it is change the Active status of drives/partitions, and that's only should we need it at all. But how about the Win 7 installation disk? Do you have that? If not then please create a Win 7 System Repair Disc before we go ahead. Help and Support will tell you how.

 

Thank you much.

Bob

 

@Earthling,

I wanted to ask you something although, a bit off topic.

Check the attached. I was lead to believe that there could be only one "Active" partition/disk on a computer system and up to four "Primary" partitions/disks in a 32-bit system. Yet, my disk management shows BOTH XP and Vista system drives as Active. Do I have a problem? Everything seems to operate normally. I use EasyBCD to switch between OSes when needed but run Vista as default.

 

No, no problem. The Active flag signifies that the partition carrying it contains the boot files, ntldr for XP, bootmgr for Vista and higher. Each disk can only have one Active flag but where there are multiple disks there may be multiple Active flags, as with yours. The BIOS determines the order in which your disks are checked for boot code, and when boot code is found control passes from the BIOS to the MBR of that disk. The code there checks which partition has the Active flag and passes control to the PBR, the partition boot record. Basically any disk that carries a bootable operating system in any of its partitions will have an Active flag. Disks that have never held an OS, like your Toshiba 160, won't.

An MBR disk, the sort we are all familiar with, can have up to four primary partitions or three primaries and an extended logical partition, both for 32 and 64 bit. The boot files have to be in a primary partition but Windows itself can be installed in a logical partition. The latest GPT disks can have 128 primary partitions and have other advantages over MBR disks, but MBR remain by far the more popular despite its limitations.