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Windows 7 installed to logical drive?

Last response: in Windows 7
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i had XP pro installed on my c drive (250gb) for a while,,,a month ago i have installed windows 7 enterprise to another hard disk (500gb) to test and get used to it while i keep my xp...so i have dual boot without any problems..
i never actually looked at it before up until today when i decided that its time to get rid of xp and keep the windows 7 as my only boot option...

as some of you have experienced before i had problems deleting the xp completely due to it being the system drive,etc..
while i was playing around i have found out that the hard drive that i have installed windows 7 has no primary partition but only a logical drive where the os is installed...while the hard drive of the xp is system drive on a primary partition...( I AM ATTACHING THE SCREENSHOT OF MY DISK MANAGEMENT)

so now i have a dillema,,i need help!!

what i ultimately want to do is to get rid of XP completely and keep my 7 as my only boot.....what the heck do i need to do to accomplish that?

i have unsuccesfully tried to delete ,format the xp manually,,,i have physically removed the xp drive which resulted in no boot at all,,cause it has the boot file...
im stuck with a drive which i cannot format,,and if i do it , i cant boot windows 7...

1 thing i didnt try is to format xp drive with xp cd setup...it will result in no boot...and boot the pc with win7 cd and repair the boot sector....i dont know if it will work and i dont trust it...i dont want to lose my windows 7 setup as i have installed all my software and settings...

the fact that it is installed on a logical drive bothers me a lot!
help?

More about : windows installed logical drive

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what you do now is move everything that you don't want lost to your 1TB drive.

after that is done (double, triple, quadurple check if needed), then detach the drive from the mobo and PSU. delete all partitions on the 250 and the 500 drives. create a partition only on the drive you want 7 to be installed on. then continue with the install.
while there may be other ways, far i know, they can get to be complicated and frustrating and if you screw up, you'll just end up doing this anyway

installing software isn't all to hard. a little time consuming though. settings can be changed again as well. just start making a list of everything.

I spent most of last weekend installing Windows 7 on a mate's computer.

Everytime we thought it was up and running, we altered the boot-device order so that the Win7 drive was #1 - This resulted in a "Operating System missing.." type thing and the computer just stalled. The only way to get the damn thing to boot was to have the DVD-drive as Bootdevice #1 and wait for the OS-timeout.

We found out that Windows altered the name of the systemdrive from D:\ to C:\ or from device0 to C:\ - WHILE INSTALLING! Talk about a lamer! The os then couldn't find the MBR and ended up screwing it's own installation up.

We tried everything: restoring, reparing, reinstalling etc. but Windows 7 did this every time!

So after a lot of beers and cigarettes and screaming and whatnot, we disconnected all Sata-devices except the (brand new btw) Kingston 64Gb SSD System drive. We started the installation again and did not install any other peripherals until after windows was done installing and updating - This worked.

So, if you want to save yourself a lot of frustration from messing with a faulty Masterboot Record, do a clean install with only ONE! HDD and the DVD-drive attached.

The system runs perfect now.......but damn it Microsoft!

thanks guys , of course there is always the best option of backing up everything and re-installing a fresh copy..and im prepared to do that eventually...before doing that ,

i have taken a hard disk image of my windows 7 hdd with acronis true image,,and attempted to do a restore to see what options it does give me.and sure enough in the beginning of the process it asks me if i want to restore it to a primary partition even if it was backed up from a logical drive...so that would solve all my problems if it reinstalls my windows 7 to primary partition...
it was too late last night so i didnt try to finish the restore..im gonna do it today...

do you think it would work? if it works i could create a new boot record and eliminate the xp right?

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to be honest. i wouldn't know. i would assume not considering that it would overwrite the MBR along with all the boot files required that are on the C drive. thats why i suggested what i did.

ok here is the update.

i have succesfully reinstalled the backup image of the windows 7 drive to a primary partition through the xp drive...
so right now all drives are bootable (well 2 of them,,the xp and the 7)

at this point all i need to do is to remove the xp completely from the system,,,what is the best way to do that?


daft thanks for the help,,,i liked the acronis true image software,,as a backup tool..

if that didnt work i was definitely ready for a fresh install which i did three times this past month :o  for a fresh xp ,fresh 7 and my sisters fresh 7 copies...not fun

well, the best way is do delete the partition.......

if you used acronis to move the 7 partition to the xp partition. i would assume it over wrote what data was on the partition first. but if it didn't, you have some editing to do.... you will want to figure out what files are 7 and what are xp in the main partition. and delete them. (make sure for a fact that its xp) open up command prompt, and go to boot.ini (cant remember what it is in 7 anymore) but in the tabs, you will find an open window that will show something similar to this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


you will want to get rid of the line that says xp.

just as a word of caution..... ive never done anything like this myself and don't know how well it will work. im going off of theory

latest update with happy ending!

after being able to move my windows 7 drive to a primary partition with acronis true image,,i have disconnected the windows xp drive and booted the system up with windows 7 dvd..chose the repair option and let it search the problems,,,on first attempt it has found out that windows 7 was copied from a back-up (which i did this morning) so it only has fixed an issue with that,,,and restarted the system,,,i still wasnt able to boot without the dvd cause i didnt have a boot.ini file on this drive yet...after booting second time with the windows 7 dvd and choosing the repair option , this time it has detected the boot issue and fixed my mbr or boot as windows 7 is the only OS...

only thing is that it detects the OS as "Windows 7 (recovered) "
i dont know why and it doesnt really matter i think...

so after the second restart i had to go to bios and change the booting drive to the windows 7 drive and it was all good...

after that i have connected back up the win xp drive and from disk management ,,finally i was able to see the format and delete volume links active for the xp drive...
i have formatted it and viola!
bye bye xp forever!
(well at least on my desktop) :) 

problem solved!
thanks guys
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