Win 7 Removal
These are the steps I took from load to removal of Win 7.
My pre-installation status was one HD with XP Pro on 1st partition, Vista Ult on 2nd, and a 3rd data storage partition.
Used Vista boot management to shrink 2nd partition, but did not use it to create the new partition in the blank space, as it will only create a logical drive partition, not a primary. Consequently booted PC from XP CD and ran Recovery console and used "diskpart" command to bring up the Partition Manager. Then created a new primary partition on the blank space after Vista and before the now 4th storage partition.
Win 7 RC loaded flawlessly and a third boot option was added to the existing two for XP & Vista. After playing around with it for awhile, then came the removal step to see what would happen.
See Kimsland's comment earlier in this thread.
I'm also concerned that the process of removal of Windows 7 is not stated, but that's a whole different topic.
To get rid of Win 7 I simply deleted the 3rd primary partition, again using XP CD Recovery console and "diskpart" command to bring up the Partition Manager. I had to use this because the Disk Management options in both XP and Vista would not allow me to delete it, as it was an "active system". I thought this would also remove any boot option reference to Win 7. Wrong! The three boot options kept coming up even though the Win7 option went nowhere.
I then had to use the Command prompt "BCDEdit" in Vista to remove the Win7 boot option. It took a lot of experimentation and frustration, and although I finally got it to work, in the process I accidentally deleted the XP boot option. So in the hope that others might benefit from my mistakes, these are the commands needed to remove a boot option using BCDEdit command:
After the cursor, type in:
BCDEdit /v
Now press enter. Note there is a space between the BCDEdit and /v. This will list the operating systems in the boot menu, and show the "Identifier string key" as a numeric/text entry and not a generic name.
Note that each boot entry does show which partition it refers to. To make identification of the partitions easier, I had already re-named my partitions using My Computer, and simply right clicking the title and re-naming. Eg, the C: drive was re-named "XP Pro". Be careful here, because with multiple operating systems, whichever OS is running will show the letter C: for the partition it's on, when you open My Computer. So if I'm operating Vista, it will be shown to occupy the C: drive, but in reality it's on the 2nd partition.
Now type the command:
BCDEdit /f /delete {type the numeric/text Identifier for the entry you wish to remove here inside the parentheses}
The final command wil look something like this:
BCDEdit /f /delete {44fa8-334Ob9-234f3bg78-1131c32c}
Note there are spaces between each main entity you type. Press Enter and this will remove the boot entry for the Identifier you have typed in between the parentheses.
Hope this helps. Cheers Poppa B. :grinthumb
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