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Moving boot manager from one disk to another


Phaenius

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Hi,

I have a problem, please help. At the moment I do have 2 operating systems on my PC, Windows Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64. My Windows Vista is installed on C drive and Windows 7 on D drive. Those are 2 individual HDD, not partitions of the same disk. When I power up the system, after POST and all I get prompted to chose what OS I should like to load. And here comes the problem. The boot manager (Windows standard, I didn't installed a third party boot manager or anything) has some files (I think they are bootmgr, grldr, NTDETECT.COM and ntldr) located on C drive. What I want ? I want to (if possible) renounce to Windows Vista altogether (so, complete uninstall) and to use only Windows 7 from now on. Since there will be just one OS, I don't need the boot manager, but if necessarily needed, I want to move it from drive C to drive D, since drive C won't be compatible to my new motherboard. So, how do I delete Windows Vista and how do I get rid of that boot manager ? Currently I need drive C just because boot manager is there, otherwise Windows will reporte ntldr is missing. Thanks.

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If you're going to keep the vista hard drive then the easy way, is to just to use the windows 7 install dvd and format the vista hard drive (of you'll have to backup everything needed before) then repair/recreate the bcd store with this procedure (the bootrec step 1 should be enough).

If you're going to remove the vista hard drive, you could try to replace it by the windows 7 hard drive (removing the vista one) and follow the same procedure (but the OS might complain later depending on how your boot loader were configured).

Also, what you said about the files at the root of the vista drive is strange as grldr is grub4dos loader (not in the least Microsoft) and ntdetect.com and ntldr belong to xp or older desktop os.

Perhaps before trying anything, you should provide more information like a screenshot of your boot manager (which might help to know which one you're using) and the output of diskpart commands list disk, list volume in each OS (or provide screenshots of disk management).

Also be sure to backup properly your datas/os before trying any solution (and know how to restore them).

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