Divorcing Windows 7 from WinXP hard-drive

Margaret James · Apr 21, 2013

When I originally installed Windows 7, I thought it would clever to make my old C:\ drive into my new D:\ drive. When Windows 7 installed, it found WinXP and decided that I wanted it to create a dual-boot system. Now I want to replace that old D:\ drive. I was able to remove the dual-boot startup with EasyBCD but when I unplugged the D:\ drive, Windows 7 refused to start up again. I tried booting with the Win 7 install DVD and running the repair tool. It didn't seem to have any effect. Now I'm a little nervous, so I hooked the old drive back up. At this point, I don't really feel like reinstalling Windows 7 but I'd really like to get that old drive out of my system. Can anybody help?

(Step 1: Yep - got both drives backed up)

ulysses35 · Apr 21, 2013

remove the HDD with Windows XP on it, boot up your pc with your windows 7 DVD and opt to "repair" the installation.... and Windows 7 should replace the missing boot files

Margaret James · Apr 22, 2013

ulysses35 :

Hmmmm..... I thought I did that. It told me to reboot, then started up the DVD again. That's when I plugged the D:\ drive back in. My C:\ drive is still an old IDE drive. Maybe I should just deep-six the C:\ drive instead. I have Acronis True Image Plus Pack and it's supposed to be able to copy whole drives so it shouldn't be too much trouble to move everything to D: (famous last words)...

WyomingKnott · Apr 22, 2013

I have a stock answer to this issue, but it's what ulysses35 wrote and it appears that it didn't work for you. The problem is that your XP drive was plugged in when you installed 7. So the 7 installation saw the boot drive and simply updated it to a 7 boot. It should have set up a dual-boot with 7 and XP. So from then on, the machine started the boot process from the XP drive and then continued with the 7 drive.

My stock answer is to make the 7 drive the only hard drive in the machine and do a repair install. But you wrote that you did that, and it still doesn't work. A key question: when you said that it didn't have any effect, do you mean that the machine won't boot without the XP drive in it, or that if you have both drives, it boots from the XP drive? These are different situations. If you meant the latter, disconnect all HDDs but the 7 drive and try to boot. If it doesn't boot, be patient with us and try the repair with only that HDD installed again, so that it can't possibly place the boot code on any other drive.

Ideal solution: Go buy an SSD to replace your IDE drive and do a clean 7 install. But that requires time and money, so it may not be ideal for you. If you clone the 7 (C) drive to the XP (D) drive, just be sure that you save your data somewhere, because a disk clone will destroy your old files on the XP drive!

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Divorcing Windows 7 from WinXP hard-drive

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