Removing your Windows 7 installation, partition (updated)

Julio Franco

Posts: 9,092   +2,043
Staff member
Now that Windows 7 is creeping up on general availability, you’ll probably want to remove your RC installation. I assume most of you interested are running these pre-release versions in a dual boot configuration, and so this directly corresponds to our dual boot guide.

Read the full guide at:
https://www.techspot.com/guides/144-removing-windows7/

Please leave your feedback here.
 
How can one remove XP partition (which is Drive C:) and remain ONLY with windows 7 partition (say it is called "F:")?
I need my 7 partition stay the only partition, and be identified as "C:".
 
Why does it have to be identified as C? My parents computer has their installed OS on drive I: This does not present any issues whatsoever.

You might just have to make sure your Master Boot Record directs you to the correct location for 7.
 
I had a different scenario, I had Win7 RC installed to a 2TB RAID5 volume, I do not have space to backup all that is on this volume (I only backup the important stuff)

So to go around the option of deleting the partition I used my own approach of simply deleteing the files, "simply" is putting it lightly though

It goes without saying that these commands must be run from the OS you do not intend to delete, in my case that is in Windows XP x64 deleting Windows 7 RC
Windows7 bootloader is on my C: drive, Windows7 is on my D: drive, keep this in mind for the commands below and modify for your own system!

From the Vista or Win7 CD find the program bootsect.exe, run it with this command; bootsect.exe /nt52 c:
This replaces your bootloader with that of Windows XP

Now to delete the bootfiles do;
takeown /r /f c:\boot
cacls c:\boot /T /G Administrator:F

After this you should be able to delete the folder "boot" in explorer, now do the same for the other Windows folders, like;
D:\Windows
D:\Users
D:\Program Files
D:\Program Files (x86)

On the next reboot you should hopefully get the Windows XP bootloader directly, and not even the choice of starting Windows7
Of course doing the above with no backups means you must really know what you are doing, one wrong move and you could loose all your data!
 
>How can one remove XP partition (which is Drive C and remain ONLY with windows 7 partition (say it is called "F:")?
>I need my 7 partition stay the only partition, and be identified as "C:".

Dangerous but if you insist... you will need to know about MountedDevices in the registry (...\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINGE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices ).. also how to make the w7 partition boot-able with BCD ... also check out EasyBCD
 
10x all! Forgot to mention that I only have 1 physical HD.
From Disks Management I can see that my 7 partition is labeled as:
Boot, Primary Partition.

My XP partition is labeled:
System, Active, Primary Partition.

Can't I just delete the XP partition?

@poertner_1274: I like it more as "C". can't explain.
I will live without that.
 
Thank you very much wonderful guidance and advice. You can write / explain very clearly. Please continue to write to help most of the people in the world. Thank you. God bless you.

Maruna - London
 
Just used this guide as machine was full and struggling.
You guys are life savers, thought I was going to have to format and start again.
Thanks very much
Gary
 
Back