Booting into Win8.1 Home requires the XP partition. How to Remove XP?

222fbj

Member
I have a 7yr old Dell (core2 duo) which started with XP and now has both XP and Win8.1 x64 Home.
XP and Win8 are on different physical drives but booting Win8 will hang if I remove the XP drive.
I want to completely remove XP so I have only Win8.
I uploaded 2 attachments: A screen capture of Drive Manager; and
EasyBCD Detailed Settings info ( http://tny.cz/be35804b )

FWIW....

  • I plan to install a SSD after I get XP removed. I could get the SSD now if that would make it easier to fix.
  • The Dell has an Intel Raid controller but none of the volumes are striped/spanned.

Thanks for any suggestions
 

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Last edited:
Disk Management flags have the following meanings


"boot" = "this is the system you're running"
"system" = "this is where I found the boot files for the currently running system"
"active" (on the first HDD in the BIOS boot sequence) = "this is where I started the search for the boot files"
"active" (on subsequent HDDs in the BIOS boot sequence) ="this is where I will look if I don't find something in the MBR on the first HDD"

As you've realized, the boot files for W8 are on the XP drive (standard procedure when installing a second OS, the install will locate the boot files on the "active" partition, automating the dual-boot process)

You can override this before install by setting the W8 target partition "active" first, but that's another matter.

After the event, EasyBCD will help you
Changing the Boot Partition

Because W8 and XP don't share a drive, take note of the instruction to change your BIOS boot sequence before rebooting.
iirc Dell is a bit sniffy about letting you change the HDD boot sequence. If so, swap the cables between the two drives to achieve the same effect.

When you have booted W8 and you can see it listed as "system" "active" and "boot", you can safely remove/format or otherwise dispose of XP.
 
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