Odd partition situation, need help removing the partition.

C

Cross

Member
OK basically I have a duel boot system and I no longer need the one OS so I want to delete the partition it use to be in. I have already removed the Operation system and fix the boot setup so Vista boots fine.

Now the problem, my old OS was in the Active Primary Partition and Vista which im keeping is in the Logical Drive Partition. I know its odd hehe.

So my "Question" is how on earth can I remove the empty Active Primary Partition? I can't figure out how to remove it. Can I just copy and past the local drive to the primary and then delete the local and still be able to run vista from the primary?
 
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Hi Cross.
Your old OS partition must be the "system" partition, and contains your Vista boot files. :wink:
Though you think it is empty, it actually contains your boot files, but the reason you can't see them is because you haven't selected the options called "Show hidden files and folder' and "Unhide protected system files" in the Folder Options in the Control Panel. :smile: Once you select those options, you should see a file called "bootmgr" and a folder called "Boot" in the "active" partition's root. Windows can only boot from primary partitions, not logical, so it is quite obvious that your Vista boot files have to be on your old OS partition. :wink: You can't remove that partition without losing the ability to boot Vista.

Cheers,

Jake
 
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Yeah after I made that post that just occurred to me and bang there they were. Arg so I guess I'm stuck unless I decide to totally redo everything. There's no way at all to bring over vista and all I have with it to the primary and fix the boot settings so it knows where vista is?
 
I think you would be better off keeping your system the way it is now. :wink: Is there some pressing necessity to have Vista on the primary partition, instead of the logical?

Cheers,

Jake
 
No necessity to but I always am trying to learn new things, I always find best to learn by doing as it sticks in my mind. I learned a lot about dual boots in here and ran through a few situations of making a dual boot from xp to vista then deleted xp later and reinstalled it and learned how to re setup the duel boot, now trying to learn how to completely reverse the situation.
 
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Cross said:
No necessity to but I always am trying to learn new things, I always find best to learn by doing as it sticks in my mind. I learned a lot about duel boots in here and ran through a few situations of making a duel boot from xp to vista then deleted xp later and reinstalled it and learned how to re setup the duel boot, now trying to learn how to completely reverse the situation.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm not sure if it would work (or if Vista will even allow it) but with all the hidden files and folders shown, and the protected system files unhidden, you can try selecting *everything* that is in your Vista logical partition with the keyboard shortcurt "ctrl + a", and then pressing "ctrl + x" to cut them, and then navigate to your primary "active" partition, and press "ctrl + v" to paste all the files inside the primary partition. Now hopefully when you reboot, Vista will not throw you some kind of error, and your Vista OS will now be on the primary partition, instead of the logical. :wink: But really, I think you would do better to just leave everything as it is now...

Cheers,

Jake

EDIT: No, there is no way you would be able to do that from within Vista itself...so scratch out that idea. I really don't know what I was thinking. You could try it from the Command Prompt from the Vista DVD though if you really want to do that.
 
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Yeah I'm going to read around a little more to see if anyone has done that and what the outcome was when they did.

Edit: I'm going to try Acronis® True Image Home 2009 it lets you make an image of your drive so I think I can use that to clone the OS and all over to the primary drive and have it work, I hope hehehe.

Addendum:

Meh the program wouldn't let me do it for partitions only to other drives. I'm open to any other ideas.
 
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Do a partition backup and than restore with the backup. Acronis (at least when booted from the disc) well allow you on restore to select you want the restored partition to be primary rather than logical. With it being a primary partition, you can also set it as active and assuming you restore the mbr as well it should work. Did this myself in the proccess of getting W7 running on my laptop along side my other OSes.
 
I did it a little different but with the same program. I took the logical drive with Vista on it that I wanted to keep and changed it to the active primary. I then went and copied all the boot files from the old primary drive and put them on the Vista drive. I then rebooted and used the Vista disk to repair the boot, which work Vista booted YAY! I then deleted the old partition and re-allocated the space. I then rebooted and everything went great everything works :smile:
 
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