How to have only Windows 7 installed?

joao_carrilho

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Aug 10, 2013
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Hi!

My computer has two operating systems installed: Windows 8 and Windows 7.
Windows 8 was the first. Windows 7 was installed after I partitioned my hard drive.

I don't use Windows 8 anymore, so I'd like to have only Windows 7 installed and delete the Windows 8 partition. Is it possible?

(I thought I could just make the Windows 7 partition active. However, that would make my computer unable to boot.)

 
Solution


As a general rule, when installing multiple Windows versions in a multi-boot environment, you always install the oldest OS first and then succeeding, newer versions. That's because the newer versions will recognize the older OS's bootloaders, but the older ones have no idea what the newer bootloaders look like.

After uninstalling, removing win8, you...

iiTzzDeFuze

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Jun 1, 2013
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How to delete a Dual Boot Partition

Click Start, right click Computer
Click Manage
Expand Disk Management

Select the partition you created for Windows 8
Right click it, click 'Format'
You will receive a Warning dialog, click OK to continue.

The next step is to select your file system option, in this case, go with the default which is NTFS.
The formatting process will now begin.
Once complete, the drive will be displayed as a ‘Logical Drive’ in Disk Management.

Right click the ‘Logical Drive’ in Disk Management, on the contextual menu, click the ‘Delete Volume’ option. Click ‘Yes’ when the warning dialog appears.
The Volume you deleted will now appear as ‘Free space’, you will also notice that the disk icon no longer appears in the list of volumes.
Right click the Free space partition, and click Delete, click Yes on the Disk Management warning that appears.


The volume will now appear as Unallocated. (good stuff). Our next step is to merge back that unallocated free space with the system partition. Right click the System volume and click the ‘Extend Volume’ option on the contextual menu, click ‘Yes’ when the warning appears.

A wizard will now begin that will guide through the steps to merge back the unallocated space with your system partition.

The wizard provides a simple procedure to merge back the unallocated space with the system drive. Once you have selected the space, click Next, at the end of the wizard, you will see the amount allocated.
 

Lord_Kitty

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May 31, 2013
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To just remove the installation, press Start and type msconfig. Go on the Boot tab, select Windows 8 and press Delete.

If you want to relocate the available space, iiTzzDeFuze explained it very well.
 

egilbe

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Nov 17, 2011
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I just learned something. That's not how I would have done it, but it seems it would work. To remove Win8, you would have to do this from within Win7, and vice versa

Only problem I could foresee is Win8 overwriting Win7's bootloader.
 

joao_carrilho

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Aug 10, 2013
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Thanks so much for the fast and well explained answers, but when trying to format Windows 8 partition an error message appears: Windows cannot format the system partition on this disk.
 

joao_carrilho

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Aug 10, 2013
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Yes, I'm on Windows 7. If I make the Windows 7 partition active, I can format the Windows 8 partition.
However, I'm afraid doing this will make my computer unable to boot: I've altered this before and I had to use the Windows 8 installation disk because my computer couldn't find any operating systems.
 

egilbe

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Nov 17, 2011
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As a general rule, when installing multiple Windows versions in a multi-boot environment, you always install the oldest OS first and then succeeding, newer versions. That's because the newer versions will recognize the older OS's bootloaders, but the older ones have no idea what the newer bootloaders look like.

After uninstalling, removing win8, you should be able to run windows recovery from the win7 CD to repair the Win7 bootloader that Win 8 may have changed.
 
Solution

joao_carrilho

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Aug 10, 2013
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Thanks everyone for the very helpful solutions.

I've solved the problem using Windows 7 installation CD -- Win8 overwrote Win7's bootloader as egilbe predicted -- and then I've expanded the partition volume using EasyUS Partition Manager. (The Windows native manager didn't allow me to expand it.)