Old situation: Machine had 2 232 GB HDDs:
– HD 0 contains a 70 MB OEM partition and a 232 GB Windows XP boot partition
– HD 1 has one partition (data disk)
I bought a new SSD, added it to my machine, let Windows 7 install on the SSD.
I then had a boot menu and could boot into either Win7 (default) or Win XP.
Now I want to re-use HD 0 as one data partition.
I thought it would be as simple as going into disk management, kill those 2 partitions on HD 0, make a new one. Here's the disk management info:
As you can see the 'Remove volume' option is grayed out.
I tried/checked:
- There is no page file on E:
- I have stopped the E: partion from being indexed
- I have removed it from the boot menu
(then reboot) - Directly after rebooting nothing is accessing E: AFAIK
- I set my Win7 partition active (originally this was not active, my screenshot is from after this step actually)
- I used diskpart to make the old XP partition (E:) inactive
(then reboot)
That last step was a mistake, now my computer would not boot. From a boot disk I could set it active again using diskpart; so now I'm back to square 1:
How can I re-use the entire HD 0 as a data disk?
(It would be OK if I could just format it and leave that little OEM partition, but format is also disabled)
My situation seems similar to this post without answers.
My boot sequence is 1) Floppy 2) Onboard CD 3) Onboard SATA.
My SATA controllers (BIOS setting) have the HDDs on 0 (the D: HDD disk 1) and 2 (the E: HDD disk 0), the SSD disk 2 on 3. All AHCI BIOS.
Best Answer
1) Make E: active again using diskpart.exe.
2) Boot to Windows 7.
3) In Windows 7 - on administrative command prompt:
bcdboot c:\windows /s c:
This will create boot files on c: which is active and bootable partition.
4) Restart. In BIOS set SSD (111,79 GB) as first disk.
5) Reboot - boot should go directly to Win 7.
6) In Windows 7 again but booted with boot manager and Boot Configuration Data(BCD) on same disk as Windows 7 !
Now you can format all other disks, detach them or whatever.
If you want a dual boot Win7+XP copy following files to C:(Windows7) from E:(XP)
\ntldr, \boot.ini, \ntdetect.com
and add a loader entry for XP in Windows 7 BCD - you could use Visual BCD Editor.
Start the tool. In tool type F9-key and confirm this will create a boot menu and loader entry for XP.
Note:
Windows 7 (or Windows XP) boot files should be always on active partition on first disk for a successful start up. Eventually boot.ini has to be adjusted to reflect position of disk with XP (in this case it will move to second or third position - see ARCPaths utility for details on amending boot.ini).