Removing EasyBCD and 1 out of 3 partitions

cscs

Member
I have a hard disk, 3 OS with EasyBCD setup as following:
Win 7 with EasyBCD, active partition
Win 10
Win 10 pro
Planned to discontinue Win 7 partition. So I setup EasyBCD in win 10 instead. Setting up with menu only contain win 10 and win 10 pro.
I then use disk manager to set my win 10 partition as active partition.
Upon reboot, I get a boot failure. What has happen ?
 
 
Thank you very much for the pointer. Will give it a try.
As after I create the boot menu, I delete drive letter from my other OS partition. Seem I would have to assign it back.

Seem not working for me. (by the way, I am using EasyBCD v2.4)
My case: Win7(active partition, with EasyBCD installed)/Win10/Win10 pro -- all partitions on same disk
Boot to win 7, assign my Win10 partition a drive letter U, Start EasyBCD-change boot drive-enter boot drive U.
According to procedures, Win10 partition is to set to active partition by EasyBCD, but seem not.
So I manually change Win10 partition to active via Win7 disk management.
Upon reboot, I get boot failure message.
I have to use a standalone partition manager to set my Win7 partition back to active to restore my system.
 
I took the following screen shoot:
Capture 3: This is the message I gotten after I do the change boot drive option.
Capture 2: This is my boot disk arrangement,
Win7_OS is where my EasyBCD installed (Active partition), after I do the change boot drive option, it remain as active partition
Win_10 is my Win 10 partition (is my default boot OS thru EasyBCD setup), I set it to active after noticing "change boot drive option" did not set
it to active.
PRO is my Win_10 pro test partition
After I use EasyBCD setting "change boot drive", manually set Win_10 as active partition thru Windows disk management. I shutdown Win7 and reboot.
I get the following message:
An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that don't contain an operating system.
Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart
I end up using a boot drive with USB, set Win7_OS as active partition and everything back to normal (ie able to boot any of the 3 partitions).

Seem to me I have something missing in Win_10 partition. I tried to used Win10 CD to perform a repair but failed. However it does boot and start up successfully if I go thru boot manager setup via my Win7_OS partition.
 

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I Wanted to see the full Disk Management with all flags visible.
As it is I can see that C is still marked "system"

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"

Can you see a U:\boot folder containing a BCD file ?
(you'll need folder options set like this for viewing these super-hidden system files)
 
Hi Terry,

Thanks very much for continue support.
Yes, I have a U:\Boot directory. However, seem you are right as I do not see a BCD file there as in C:\Boot directory
The U:\Boot directory seem to contain only another directory U:\Boot\macrium, I do have Macrium installed in my Win10 partition.

Is this file suppose to build with EasyBCD when I choose change boot drive from EasyBCD or I have to copy it over manually?

I forgot about disk management flags:
Win7 partition: System, boot, Active, Primary partition
Win10 partition: Primary partition
Win10 pro partition: Primary partition
Even after using EasyBCD change boot drive option, above remain the same.

If I use Win7 disk management to change Win10 to active partition:
Win7 partition: System, boot, Primary partition
Win10 partition: Active, Primary partition
Win10 pro partition: Primary partition

Seem "Boot" flag is still with Win7 (I guess is normal as I have not reboot the system as boot will fail).
 
That Macrium recovery boot option on W10 might be part of the problem, but if so I don't know why EasyBCD is reporting success when it apparently didn't do what was required. I would have expected a failure message of some kind.
Can you post a full Disk Management screenshot and the contents of EasyBCD "view settings" (detailed mode) so I can get a better picture of your system.
 
I backup the whole disk and did the following test. It seem to me some of the EasyBCD function may be not working well (v2.4)
Following is recall from my memory, Inside <...> is my additional comment:
1. As I already have 4 partition on my boot disk, I remove my "WORK" disk and create a "BOOT" disk which is only 100M in size.
<in Win 7 where my EasyBCD installed, I assigned "BOOT" drive as drive H>
2. Use BCD Backup/Repair-Change boot drive-Perform Action and set boot drive to "H"
3. Use BCD deployment and install BCD to the 100M partition
<I am not sure if this can be done on my Win10 partition, I think it may risk my Win10 so I try on 100M partition>
<I check with Win7 disk management, yes Boot drive move to this 100M small partition>
4. Use BCD Backup/Repair-Reset BCD configuration, Follow by Add New entry.
5. I can successfully create boot menu Win7/Win10/Win10 pro and boot to all 3 OS without problem.

Pending:
After a few days of testing, I believe I can then successfully remove Win7 partition and restore my "WORK" partition.

I guess the hang up is the "change boot drive" option did not ready change targeted drive to "Active" status.
BCD deployment and install BCD option is the option actually change the boot partition to active.
 
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