How To Delete First (System) Partition Of Dual Boot System

I've just signed up to ask a question, but before I do I'd like to say that Terry60's pinned post "Please read before posting" explained some things to me that I'd never had explained before, e.g. the Disk Management "System flag" and "Boot flag". In fact, they probably explain why I have my current problem.

Also, the "Multibooters.co" article is brilliant. I'll need to read it again 4 or 5 times to absorb all the good stuff in it.

My problem: I've got 5 computers on my home network: some old, some newish. Three of them dual boot XP and Windows 10. One is XP only (my main one <sorry>), and one has two Windows 10 installations on it. This one - a laptop - is the one that has the problem.

The first Win10 partition is faulty - the other computers on my local network cannot see it, so I want to delete this first partition. This partition has the following flags: System, Active, Primary Partition.

The next partition has no name and has this flag: Recovery Partition.

The next partition is named Data and has this flag: Primary Partition

The next and last partition is named Win10New and has these flags: Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Logical Drive. This installation is fully up to date, works perfectly and can see all the other computers and they can see it.

I want to delete the first partition because I like to make System Images frequently, and the extra 35 GB used by the faulty Win10 partition wastes imaging time and could be used to increase my Data partition.

What I tried was deleting the first partition using Partition Wizard 9. This is my favourite partition manager which I've used many times in the past, booting it from USB, but never to delete the first partition - usually to create a second one from unallocated space and then create a data partition or for installing another version of Windows in.

You're probably chuckling to yourself already because you've guessed what happened - the system became unbootable. So I restored the System Image that I'd made beforehand and I'm back to a working system.

So the question is: how do I delete the first partition, not delete the MBR, and not mess up the booting?
 
Changing the Boot Partition
will copy everything necessary to your secondary W10 and set it active.
Once Win10New is all three "active" "system" "boot", you'll be able to format the other W10 partition without crippling the PC
Thank you Terry60 very much indeed. The first time I tried to change the Boot Partition using EasyBCD I got the error message stating that the target partition must be a Primary Partition - it was, in fact, a Logical Partition. So I ran Partition Wizard 9 and converted it to a Primary Partition. Very simple and quick.
Then I checked that it still booted OK - no problem.
Then I followed the procedure to "Change The Boot Partition" using EasyBCD, as in your link. It worked fine and I rebooted to make sure it was OK and ran Disk Management to check that the Win10New partition was marked as System and Bootable.
Then I ran Partition Wizard again and deleted the old faulty Win10 partition. Rebooted - all was OK except the boot menu was still displayed giving the option to boot the now deleted system. So I used EasyBCD to delete that entry.

Now the laptop boots OK, does not bother showing the boot menu and all is well.

Thanks very much for your help.
 
Sorry !
should have spotted that "logical" flag in your OP and warned you.
Glad you sorted your way past it anyway.
 
Sorry !
should have spotted that "logical" flag in your OP and warned you.
Glad you sorted your way past it anyway.

No problem Terry60! Often the best way to learn is to hit a problem, learn more about it, fix it, and carry on :smile:
So now I know a little bit more about Primary partitions and Logical partitions.

FYI, now that I've removed that unwanted Windows partition, my System Image size has reduced to 22 GB, from 48 GB and the time to create has dropped to about 10 minutes. So it's all good and your help has been invaluable - much appreciated.
 
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