Removing Dual Boot

P

pschacknow

Member
Just downloaded EasyBCD after hearing many good reviews, but I'm not quite clear on how to accomplish the following using the software:

I have a computer that was originally a Windows XP box. I eventually installed a second hard drive and installed Windows 7, keeping the XP installation intact. When I boot, it comes up with the normal dual boot menu, asking if I want Windows 7 or "Earlier Version of Windows".

All well and good, but what I'd like to do now is have the Windows 7 disk be the ONLY boot disk, and have the other disk merely be a second hard drive so that I can access the files.

Just want to be sure that I do this correctly! Thanks for any help.
 
You want to keep XP intact, access the data on it but never boot it ?
If so just delete the "earlier version...." entry from the BCD using EasyBCD 2 > Edit boot menu.
With only one choice, you won't see a boot menu.
If you want to ditch XP but keep your personal files, that's not difficult but the procedure will depend on how you installed W7 (specifically where it put its boot files).
You can determine that by looking for the "system" flag in Disk Management when W7 is booted.
 
Thanks, Terry! Appreciate the advice, which I will try when I get the opportunity. Yes, the idea is to ultimately eliminate the XP disk as a possible boot disk and just have it as an extra hard drive.

This came about because that disk has started to act a bit quirky - I removed it from the computer, but then, of course, the computer wouldn't boot because it wanted to see that second disk.

FYI, the Win 7 disk was a clean install on a fresh hard drive.
 
In that case (you should see "system" "active" "boot" on the W7 partition, or "boot" on W7 and "system" "active" on a 100Mb System Reserved Partition in front of W7, if you let it allocate the space itself), you can just copy the data you want to preserve across to W7 temporarily, format XP out of existence, and move the data back to the empty drive.
(If you've been having problems with the old drive, remember to "full" format it (not "quick"). The former will do a disk surface analysis and remove any defective blocks from future use. The latter just resets the file table to say all space is available (including the dodgy bits))
 
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