SOLVED Move Windows 7 System Partition

[Haplo]

Hi (I'm new here), I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, and am having a bit of an issue in Windows Disk Management:

I used to use Windows XP (skipped Vista entirely), and had it installed on my C:\ drive. I bought a new drive, D:\, for Windows 7. I installed Windows 7 on D:\, and left XP on C:\, but when I open Disk Management in Windows 7, it says that Local Disk (C is the System partition, not D, even though I'm not on XP while checking it. And when I load My Computer (Well, it's just Computer now, I guess; I renamed it to My Computer for ease of familiarity), my D:\ drive has the little blue bar & Windows logo on the HDD icon, while the C:\ drive is just a picture of a HDD.

I am looking for a way to switch the "System" bit over to my D:\ drive partition (I only have two HDDs, and only one partition per HDD) from my C:\ drive, but the option is not available. My reason for doing this is that I want to reformat/erase XP off of my C:\ drive since I no longer use it, and perhaps install Linux on it or just use it for internal storage.

However, when I got Windows 7 Ultimate x64 from the Download Center, I didn't burn it to a disk, but rather mounted it to a Virtual Drive on XP (which is my C:\ drive), and chose to install Windows 7 to my D:\ drive.

Did installing it this way put the so-called 100 or 200MB Windows 7 recovery/boot/whatever partition I've heard about onto my C:\ drive, and thus make it impossible/dangerous to just reformat my C:\ drive? In other words, since reformatting my Windows 7 HDD isn't a viable option for me, am I stuck?

 

[Ian]

Hello and welcome Haplo!

If you can't see the 200mb partition then it won't exist, which is good news. If you're unsure you can post a screenshot of the disk management console, just so we can see the layout of the drives in case there is a WinRE partition there.

I've not actually tried what you are doing for quite some time, but I would assume you can just format your 1st drive (although I would just disable it in the BIOS for now, as this will have the same effect) and then your PC will try to boot from the current D: which will no doubt fail, meaning you will need to boot from the Windows 7 DVD and perform a startup repair which should re-create the boot files. Once that works, you can then enable the other drive and format it. Perhaps someone else who has done this recently could confirm if it works.

 

[Haplo]

Thanks, I'll try disabling C:\ in BIOS and get back here with the results.

 

[Ian]

Try to burn the W7 image to a DVD if you can, as you can use the startup repair tool on that to re-create the boot file you will need

 

[clifford_cooley]

Hi Haplo - Welcome to w7forums

Once you do as Ian suggest and the computer doesn't boot you can use the link below for repairing your boot files.

I would mark D: as the active partition and completely remove the XP drive before using the Recovery Disk. This will ensure that the Recovery Disk are not setting up a dual boot that you will later need to be correct when removing XP.

https://www.w7forums.com/download-windows-7-system-recovery-discs-t2049.html

 

[Haplo]

Alright. So I restarted my computer, and opened up the BIOS. I couldn't find an option that resembled "turning off" a HDD, except for "seek other boot drives" which I set to "disabled". When I did this, and also when I changed the HDD priority from my old XP drive being first to my new 7 drive being first, I get a load error titled:

NTLDR is missing
Press ctrl+alt+del to restart

I am currently searching around the web to try to find ways of fixing this easily, but please feel free to elaborate on it if you guys are familiar with that error.

 

[clifford_cooley]

Once you do as Ian suggest and the computer doesn't boot you can use the link below for repairing your boot files.

https://www.w7forums.com/download-windows-7-system-recovery-discs-t2049.html

 

[Haplo]

Oops, bit of a double post. Please Delete

 

[Haplo]

Completely detaching the XP HDD and booting from the repair CD worked! Thanks guys!