How to Remove Windows Xp From Windows 7
Hi Jon,
From within the operating system you cannot delete a system volume, boot volume, or any volume that contains the active paging file or crash dump (memory dump) or OEM partition. You will have to use a bootable disc or a recovery disc to format the primary partition. You can use the command prompt to access DISKPART and format the volume of your choice. Refer the following link for help on DISKPART syntax:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770877(v=WS.10).aspx
Use DISKPART to select disk, select partition, select volume and then use Format command.
Yes, after formatting you will have to use startup repair to boot into Windows 7. Generally Windows 7 will display the drive in which it is installed as C drive, but the partition will remain the same.
You will not be able to move the Windows 7 operating system to C drive. You will have to install a new instance.
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Thanks for replying, Kiran!
I figured that I couldn't delete my Win XP installation from within Windows; I was thinking of using DISKPART from the Windows "Command Prompt" (accessed from the Windows Recovery Environment [WRE] on my Windows 7 DVD), to re-format my primary hard disk 0 as a single new primary, bootable partition. Then I was going to copy my Windows 7 installation from the logical drive on my secondary hard disk 1 to my newly-reformatted hard disk 0, using DISKCOPY (again from the Command Prompt). That procedure worked for me once before, way back in the late 1990's, when I successfully copied my existing Windows 95 installation from an existing to a new, larger and faster hard disk, then shut down and opened the computer, swapped the primary and secondary jumpers on my two EIDE hard disks, and then rebooted successfully into Windows 95 from the new disk. I subsequently deleted the original Windows 95 installation from the old hard disk, by re-formatting it as a single extended partition, for use as a data storage drive (for documents, etc).
This time, I won't have to change the boot sequence of my two SATA hard disks, to boot from primary disk 0 by default. But since I now have a dual-boot installation, I figured that I would have to rebuild the MBR and the BCD store to get the Windows 7 boot process to initiate properly from it's new location on disk 0. I thought I would probably have to physically disconnect disk 1 temporarily (after copying my Windows 7 installation to disk 0) so that during it's initial scan, the Startup Repair process (or "BootRec.exe") would only "see" the "new" Windows 7 installation on disk 0. Then, if I got Windows 7 to boot successfully from hard disk 0, I would shut down the system, reconnect hard disk 1, and then use DISKPART again (from the Command Prompt in the WRE on the Win 7 DVD), to delete the logical drive on hard disk 1 that contains my original (and current) Windows 7 installation.
However, if I understand your previous post correctly, you seem to be saying that I can only use the "Startup Repair" process from the WRE to salvage my current Windows 7 installation (after deleting Windows XP) in it's ORIGINAL location, on the logical drive on hard disk 1 - but if I want to move it to the faster hard disk 0, I will have to do a complete reinstallation of everything, from scratch. That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid!
BTW, the Windows 7 "Experience Index" currently shows my hard disk 1 (3-in. dia., 7,500 RPM) as the biggest "performance bottleneck" on my fast system; that's a major reason why I want to move it to hard disk 0 (2-in. dia., 10,000 RPM). Plus, I just prefer to have my O/S on my primary drive, and now that I've become quite familiar with Windows 7, I really don't need Windows XP anymore (and extended support for it will be ending soon anyway). In thinking about all this, remember that the current Windows 7 installation on hard disk 1 boots as being on "Drive C:", and it will still be running from "Drive C:" if I can get it to boot from hard disk 0. So if I can get it to start booting, it at least should be able to find it's own system files! (I might have to re-map the links to my documents and media files though, since they'll still be on the same separate logical drive [on hard disk 1], which may end up being assigned a new drive letter.)
In view of all of the above, can you explain to me why the Startup Repair process won't work if I move my Windows 7 installation to hard disk 0? Especially since the repair process apparently starts with a scan of all installed operating systems, right?
I realize that a lot has changed (i.e., been tightened up) with respect to license enforcement since the days of Windows 95. Is that part of the issue here? Does Windows 7 actually "know" what physical disk it's on? Note that what I'm trying to do wouldn't violate my user license; I would still have only one copy of Windows 7 on one machine (after deleting the no-longer-needed installation on hard disk 1).
Thank-you for any additional feedback!
Jon
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Hi Jon,
If I haven't understood incorrectly, you have 2 hard disks and you plan to move the Windows 7 installation from Disk 1 to Disk 0. How to you plan to move the Windows 7 Operating System?
If you are able to successfully move the installation to Disk 0 then startup repair should help you repair/re-create the boot manager.
Hope the information helps.
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I plan to use DISKCOPY from the Command Prompt to copy my Windows 7 installation from disk 1 to a reformated primary disk 0, and then (if I can successfully boot from disk 0 after repairing the MBR and the BCD store) delete the Windows 7 installation from disk 1, as I explained more fully in the first two paragraphs of my last post, above (sorry if it was hard to follow).
I'm glad to hear that Startup Repair should work, to rebuild the MBR and the BCD store so that Windows 7 will boot correcty from disk 0. The way the "/RebuildBcd" switch works in "BootRec.exe", which starts out by scanning all disks for Windows 7 installations, makes me think that it ought to work.
BootRec.exe reference:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392
Jon
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Well, just the other day I finally got around to trying to remove my Windows XP OEM installation and move my Windows 7 installation to my primary hard disk, as outlined in my first two posts above.
Because I wasn't sure if this would work, I decided to "play it safe" by removing my existing primary drive (Disk 0) from my Dell Precision 390 Workstation (with my Windows XP Pro OEM installation still intact on it) and installing a new, indentical fast primary hard drive in its place, after I got a good deal on another WD VelociRaptor WD1600HLFS-75G6UI SATA drive (2.5-inch dia., 160 GB, 10,000 RPM) on eBay. After fully testing the new drive with the Dell Diagnostics utility, and then (by using DiskPart) finding that it was already formatted with a single primary NTFS partition, I copied my complete Windows 7 Pro installation from my secondary hard disk (Disk 1) to my new, blank primary hard disk (which is still my C: Drive BTW, as before), using XCOPY with the /S and /V switches set (it turns out that DISKCOPY is not included in the Cmd.exe program in the Windows Recovery Environment on the Windows 7 Installation DVD that I booted from to get to a Command Prompt window). By comparing the used space on both drives after copying, I noted that most, but apparently not all of my Windows 7 files were copied to my new drive (My old MS-DOS 6.2 reference book says that XCOPY won't copy hidden source files, which if it still applies to the version of XCOPY included in Windows 7 Cmd.exe, may well constitute a problem here).
Next, I disabled the secondary hard disk (Disk 1) in my system BIOS (to make my original Windows 7 installation "invisible"), then re-booted from the Windows 7 Installation DVD into the Windows RE. Using Bootrec.exe, I attempted to rebuild the MBR and the BCD store in the copied Windows 7 installation on my new primary drive, to replace the boot data copied from my original Win XP/Win 7 dual-boot installation with updated boot information appropriate to my "new" Windows 7-only installation on my new drive (Drive 0). Then I ran Start-up Repair in the Windows RE to see if my "new" installation of Windows 7 was now bootable. Start-up Repair found one remaining problem: No valid boot sector on the new primary hard disk. So I used the /FixBoot function of Bootrec.exe to write a new boot sector to the system partition on the new drive, then I ran Start-up Repair again. At this point, Start-up Repair seemed to become confused; it attempted further repairs, then reported several problems as unfixable, and said to contact Microsoft Support!
Nevertheless, I tried re-booting from my "new" Windows 7 installation several times, all of them unsuccessful. At first, my system found "No Bootable Operating System", but after several more attempts at repairs using Bootrec.exe and DiskPart (including making my new drive "Active" via DiskPart, a probably risky last resort), I finally ended up stuck with a "BootMgr is Missing" message whenever I tried to boot from my new hard disk.
At this point, I gave up and removed my new primary hard disk with my unbootable "new" Windows 7 installation still on it, and reinstalled the original primary hard disk containing my Windows XP OEM installation. Fortunately, this still works; I can boot into Windows XP Pro normally once again, and after re-enabling my secondary hard disk in the system BIOS, I can still boot into Windows 7 from the Boot Menu as well, so I'm now back where I started with a fully-functioning dual-boot system. Good thing I decided to preserve my original Windows XP primary drive, rather than reformatting it and attempting to re-utilize it for Windows 7!
Kiran, could you please critique what I've done so far? I have several questions about this procedure myself. One concern is whether the pre-formatted primary partition on my new hard drive was in fact a valid system partition (based on some of the error messages I got from Start-up Repair, etc.). On reflection, I probably should have deleted it and created a new, primary partition, formatted it as NTFS, and made it "Active", using DiskPart, right? Another concern is whether I can successfully copy ALL of my Windows 7 files (including critical "hidden" files) from my secondary hard disk to my new primary hard disk by using XCOPY in Cmd.exe. Is there something else I should use? I don't see any kind of a disk copy function listed in DiskPart's inventory of commands. BTW, I used Microsoft KB Article 300415 as a reference for DiskPart, and KB Article 927392 for Bootrec.exe. I also have Windows 7 Inside Out - Deluxe Edition, from Microsoft Press, as a helpful reference, particularly for helping me understand the Windows 7 vs. the Windows XP boot process.
Thanks for any further help with this!
Jon
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How to Remove Windows Xp From Windows 7
Source: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/deleting-win-xp-from-a-dual-boot-win-xpwin-7/539df487-4f26-4e26-9bf1-127017662912
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