Return to single boot from dual

Dekkerfish

Dekkerfish

Member
Hi,

I've read through quite a lot in the forum, and reckon I have two issues to resolve with a little guidance hopefully.

My scenario:-

I was running xp only with 3 hdd's. (all just single partitions)
I installed windows 7 onto one hdd, keeping xp on its original hdd (in case I made an error).
It worked correctly straight away I think as a dual boot, where I got the dual boot message 'use an older version' or 'windows 7'.

I now think I would be OK just having windows 7 'only' as I have moved the files from the xp hdd.
But I have now added an ssd drive which I want to use for my os and my main game.
I have cloned windows 7 onto the ssd successfully it appears, but I can't boot from this drive it still boots from the original windows 7 install.
When I try to change the boot order in the bios I get an error 'cannot find ntldl' or something very similar when I try to boot so I'm having to keep my xp drive in its boot order.

Sorry its long I know but in this order!

1. Would I be best removing the dual boot therefore removing xp from the equation? (this would aid choosing the boot sequence???)

2. If so would I then be able to change the windows 7 boot drive to the ssd somehow?

Hopefully it makes sense but I'm not really good with the software side of things at all :shame:
 
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The NTLDR missing message is an XP error indicating that the MBR on the SSD is an XP version. (looking for NTLDR instead of bootmgr.
Disconnect your HDDs temporarily, leaving just the SSD, then boot the W7 DVD, and "repair your computer" > "startup repair" three times. You should then be able to boot the SSD W7 unaided.
Reconnect any OSs you still want to keep, and add entries for them into the new BCD on the SSD, using EasyBCD 2.0 latest build
 
Thanks Terry, I had seen that in a thread here (windows repair 3 times) but wanted someone to ratify it against my setup first.

So if I do that it will then make my ssd able to boot the system into win 7 normally.

Will I not still get the dual boot message on startup though as I will have to reconnect my other hdds (one hdd has xp, another has win 7 which I cloned, the other is just storage).

Your final comment about using BCD, I have downloaded it and what I have read sounds great what it can do but I really don't know how to use it.

I would appreciate it if you could give me a very simple operators guide for BCD please :smile: (just imagine someone that does not have a clue what they are doing and multiply it by 5)

Thanks

Tony
 
If you've repaired the MBR on the SSD (one of the three passes), then it will no longer be looking for NTLDR, and you won't get that problem when you boot from the SSD.
Keep the SSD ahead of the HDDS in the BIOS boot sequence, and when you've reconnected the other systems, you won't see a boot menu, you'll just go into W7 on the SSD directly.
Only after you've added entries to the BCD will a boot menu appear giving you an option at boot time.
Use "add new entry", select the "Windows" tab then choose the correct OS type from the dropdown menu (NT/2K/XP.....) for XP, (Vista/7) if you're keeping the other W7.
You can change the name to however you want it to appear in your menu if you wish, and for W7 you point it to the disk letter for the other W7 as the booted W7 sees it, not as it thinks of itself.
For XP the "drive" field will disappear. EasyBCD will offer to auto-configure XP. Say "yes" and it will do everything for you. It will detect all the XPs and create a suitable boot.ini in the right place and copy all the XP boot files to where they need to be.
Only add one XP entry to the BCD for XP even if you have multiple XPs. the BCD chains the legacy boot-loader (NTLDR) and it will present a second menu (if you have multi-XPs) where you can choose between them. EasyBCD 2.0 does it all for you.
 
Thanks for the explanation, I did wonder what BCD actually was and have worked it out now.

I will try repairing it later, but it sounds easy which is good.

So once I have repaired win 7 on the ssd it will then be my only boot drive unless I add an OS to the BCD.

Then after that I can simply reconnect my 'XP' hdd and other win 7 hdd and reformat them to regain the space for storage :smile:
 
Finally got chance to rebuild the startup of the window 7 last night.
It did take 3 attempts before it even 'saw' my ssd but did enable it as my only boot drive.
It did though then show windows 7 as not being genuine for some reason, but I think I will just carry out the process again but this time a fresh install rather than a repair.

Thanks for the help as I would not have known how to do it.
 
The "not genuine" is just a MS response to the fact that you've changed the location of W7. (it assumes you're making a pirate copy).
Just re-activate W7, and it should be fine. (that de-activates the original copy in the MS DB, so that 2 people can't be using the same licence on different PCs)
 
Terry60 said:
The "not genuine" is just a MS response to the fact that you've changed the location of W7. (it assumes you're making a pirate copy).
Just re-activate W7, and it should be fine. (that de-activates the original copy in the MS DB, so that 2 people can't be using the same licence on different PCs)
Click to expand...
Yeah, and that's a pretty dumb assumption I might add.
Seriously, I think Microsoft is a little too worried about pirates.
I mean, just think of all the billions of dollars rolling in to Bill Gates anyway...

Personally, I think if a few people here and there don't want to have to pay for Windows (probably because they're too poor to afford 200 bucks or so for a fresh install of Windows), Microsoft shouldn't try to force them to anyway. That's just a greedy corporational attitude to hold. Why not just let them?

And far too often, all their stupid little "features" to prevent "piracy" just end up hindering what honest users are trying to legitimately do with the software.
 
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I have everything working as I hoped so thank you.

Quick question rather than start a new thread, is it possible to change from directx 10 to directx 9 in windows 7?

Thanks in anticiation
 
It does have dx11 yes but my graphics card is only dx10.

I'm aware that dx11 is backward compatible but would prefer to use dx9 as my gaming fps has dropped since moving over to w7, so thought it might help to use the earlier version.
I think w7 runs the directx in auto but don't know how to change it.

edit: I found it, actually in the game folder not w7 my mistake
 
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