Took off my second OS. How to remove EasyBCD and have the machine boot up without it?

J T

Member
Hello,

I have a HD with 3 partitions XP on the C: Win 7 was on the D: and H is for storage no OS was ever there.

I took Win 7 off because I wanted to try Win 8.1, now Win 8.1 is gone too.

If I simply remove EasyBCD I'm sure that the machine won't boot without it.

What settings must I revert to,to make the machine boot normally? IE: W/o EasyBCD.

Thanks in advance.

J T
 
EasyBCD doesn't take any part in booting your PC. It just manages the BCD which the MS Vista/7/8 bootmgr uses to store information.
You can uninstall/reinstall EasyBCD whenever you like. It has no effect on your system except occupying a little space.
Only when you run it and use it to change your system in some way will it have any effect on subsequent boots.
If your PC boots OK into XP as your lone system, you can get rid of EasyBCD if you wish.
Are you saying that you left W7/8 bootmgr in control, though you removed the OSs ?
If so, there's no harm in leaving it to boot XP. It will take a second or two longer because it chains NTLDR rather than the MBR calling it directly, but I doubt you'd notice the difference.
If you wish to go back to a vanilla XP boot with NTLDR being invoked directly by the MBR, you can use EasyBCD advanced options to install the XP boot loader.
Updating the MBR and Bootsector - EasyBCD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki
 
Are you saying that you left W7/8 bootmgr in control, though you removed the OSs ?

HI Terry,

Well I just deleted the 2nd partition ( D) so there is nothing left of anything there, it's just unallocated space right now.

What puzzles me is that EasyBCd still lists Win 8 as still being there and offers it as a 2nd boot choice. I went in and removed the reference to Win 8 and leaving only XP as listed. When I went to boot up I got a black screen! Mercifully I had an image of XP that I could install to make it boot again (whew) but again why would removing the reference to Win 8 make XP not boot> Now I'm afraid to touch the thing! lol No way to get to the OS so I had to use the image.

It does boot just fine the way it is so I may just let it alone, I am considering putting an image of Win 7 back on the D partition anyway so I will need EasyBCD again anyhow.

Thank you very much, lots of good information here!!

J T
 
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Well your problem lies in what you did. First off the BCD is only used by Windows Vista and newer. Since you removed the only OS that could use the BCD and it boot processes by deleting Windows 8 and leaving Windows XP, you left the machine without a proper boot. Which is why when you selected XP, it gave you the problem. XP does not use the BCD and since the entry was tied to how the drive setup was with EasyBCD, it gave incorrect parameters and caused the black screen.

You needed to insert the XP CD and fix the MBR that way. Since XP doesnt use the BCD at all therefor making the use of EasyBCD null, your only option was to repair XP the old fashion way. Hope that clears up why your issue came about and how it can be solved if it comes up again.
 
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