Win 7 and XP dual boot system; deleting one

I have decided since I have not booted into my XP system in quite a while, to reformat the disk and use it for storage since I am running out of space on my storage drive. XP, 7 and storage are all on separate physical hard drives.
My problem is that when I boot up I get the OS choices screen. If I reformat the XP drive will the screen auto-update to not include XP? Or do I need to do something in XP to delete it from the OS choices screen. I figure since Easy BCD is on XP and was configured in XP then if XP is gone then the system should auto boot into Win7. Am I wrong? Just wondering if there are any pre-format activities that I should make sure that I do. One important thing to mention is that XP was on the system 1st. Windows 7 was added later, however again, they are on separate physical hard drives and Win 7 is full version.
I already have XP on a laptop that is not 7 ready so I really do not NEED it on this system; also with the XP VM feature in 7 it really makes using that disk pretty useless. Thanks for any help or advice in advance.

 

Well because I had XP first; I had to use Easy BCD in XP to update teh boot menu to include Windows 7.

 

It wasn't unplugged but XP was not in the list; just Windows 7 and "earlier version of windows" so I used BCD to create Windows XP in the list rather than the earlier version listing.

Another reason I wanted to delete WinXP is that I cannot use Windows 7 restore feature without putting in the disk and repairing from there; and I lose a lot of info that way and setting in Outlook. I am not sure if XP has anything to do with it.

So if I just reformat the disk that XP is on; I should not have any issues? I mean reformat within Windows 7 Disk Management. Or should I reformat a better way?

 

Yes, I am just anal and wanted it to actually say XP.

 

Your Windows 7 boot file is either corrupt or missing. Put in your Win 7 recovery disk if you have one. If you don't, get out your Win 7 install DVD and let it boot into the pre-setup environment. Click on "Repair computer ", then click on "Fix startup problems" and try booting into Win 7 again. Let us know if that solved the issue. Good luck.

 

Worse that I thought...

Ok, sorry it took me so long; but I unplugged the WinXP drive and the system does not appear to see any other OS.

I had a feeling, for some reason my BIOS sees my Win 7 disk and my storage disks but will not allow them to be part of the boot process no matter what I do. I have flashed gone back to the original config and still only sees the drives won't let them be part of the boot process, so I am not surprised that BIOS finds no OS when the XP disk, which is the original disk that came with the system from Lenovo. I guess then I am stuck with a dual boot with XP then? Unless I reformat the XP to own Win 7 and delete my current Win 7, which means I have too much from the beginning work to do and really don't have time for that.
Any other ideas?

 

Not sure where in this, the post was meant to be....

Hi Crunch, Not sure where your post came in or what it had to do with my original post. I never had issues booting into Win 7 in my dual boot; the issue is that when I unplugged the WinXP disk; BIOS and POST do not see that I have any other disks. Please see above post as it is my most current standing with the problem.

Basically, I had Win XP 1st; been using Win 7 for a while now and need the space Win XP is taking up; since I do not use it anymore. Wanted to reformat the whole XP disk and use that as an extra storage as my other storage drive is getting full. All of these disks WinXP, win7 and Storage are all separate physical drives, NOT partitions. So basically, I cannot get rid of XP as stated in the upper post. Any ideas?

 

Alright, so it's more of a cosmetic issue rather than a technical one it looks like to me. Is that about right? Anyway, a few weeks ago, I no longer needed an XP partition that I had for testing purposes, so I deleted the partition (it should be even easier if you have yours on an entirely different physical drive) that Windows XP resided on. If you can still boot into Windows 7 and only want to get rid of an entry in your dual-boot setup, just use EasyBCD again to remove the part that no longer applies.

Actually, you ought not need EasyBCD anymore at all, unless there's another OS, such as Linux or OS X that you're wanting to dual-boot into, so just remove the entry for XP. I mentioned the Windows 7 startup repair disk, because sometimes, you end up with a corrupt or missing boot config for Win 7, and the procedure that I described above remedies that by re-building ( "repairing ") the boot setup that you need for Windows 7.

One more piece of advice about virtualizing XP in Windows 7. Microsoft's own Virtual PC will do the trick. However, try using VMware Player 3.0.1, which is also free, and which works better than Virtual PC IMHO. I've tried both, and being that's all that VMware does, i.e. design virtualization software, it makes sense that it works more smoothly and doesn't take up a lot of resources at all.

Hopefully, this will help you out a bit.

 

Hi lyekka

I have a similar setup to you. Originally I had a 80GB (PATA) HDD which I partitioned into 4 partitions - 1 for working XP, 2 for test use with XP, 3 for Win98 and 4 for data. When I moved to W7 I installed a 500GB (SATA) HDD which I divided into two partitions - 1 for W7, and 2 for data.

When W7 was installed it automatically set up a dual boot 'choices' screen which, like yours, just shows Windows 7 (highlighted) or 'earlier version of Windows'. Choosing the 'earlier version', boots into the XP working copy and seems to ignore the other copy of XP and Win98. I am contemplating re-formatting the entire 80GB HDD, as I really no longer need XP, but have not yet experimented with removing that drive to see whether I can still boot into W7.

However I have noticed two interesting things. Firstly in W7 Disk Management the XP HDD status shows Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition) and the W7 HDD shows Healthy (Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition). Secondly, in BIOS there is a setting for HD Boot Priority and one can select one of three settings - 1 Ch0. (which is the XP disk, 2 SATA M. (which is the W7 disk, and 3 Bootable Add-in Card (don't know what this means). Mine is set to number 1 and, I suspect, is the reason for System being included with the status of the XP disk. I imagine that changing the setting to number 2 would probably cause System to be included in the status of the W7 disk.

I hope the above may prove helpful to you in solving your problem. If it is, please post your results here. Good luck.