Uninstall XP from a Dual Boot XP/Win7 Installation

[rproto]

I purchased Bing a few years ago. I followed all of the wonderful video tutorials and directions to create a dual boot with Windows XP in a partition that is in the front of the drive followed by Win7 in another partition. I have a partition of 8 Megs where BING is installed and a 55 Meg Partition with Dell Utilities. I also followed the instructions to hide Win7 from XP and it has all worked flawlessly. Now, I would like to repurpose this machine and uninstall the XP partition and add that space to the Win 7 partition but I don't know how to go about doing that. Do I delete the XP partition (creating unallocated space in the front of the drive)? How do I add that space to the Win 7 partition? Should I just delete both partitions and restore my image to a new partition? Will the computer boot?

I never upgraded my BING installation to BIBM. I also have IFD \ IFW and I have made an image of the entire drive. What next? I would appreciate a tutorial on going from a dual boot to a single boot. While I am not as skilled as everyone else on this forum I am good at following directions. Thanks for your help!

RP

[Bob Coleman]

You should be able to:

1. Delete the XP boot item (probably not absolutely necessary, but good for cleanliness)

2. Delete the XP partition.

3. Slide the Win 7 partition into the space vacated by the XP partition.

4. Resize the Win 7 partition to include the now empty space following it.

[TAC109]

On Sat, 17 Jan 2015 17:43:43 PST, Bob Coleman wrote:

>You should be able to:
>
>1. Delete the XP boot item (probably not absolutely necessary, but good for cleanliness)
>
>2. Delete the XP partition.
>
>3. Slide the Win 7 partition into the space vacated by the XP partition.
>
>4. Resize the Win 7 partition to include the now empty space following it.
>
After completing Bob's suggestions, your computer may not boot without
further intervention, in which case see knowledge base articles such
as http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=411

[mjnelson99]

A slide can take a LONG time.
Is it possible to just restore Win 7 to the place XP now has?
Mary

On 1/17/2015 7:43 PM, "Bob Coleman" wrote:
> You should be able to:
>
> 1. Delete the XP boot item (probably not absolutely necessary, but good for cleanliness)
>
> 2. Delete the XP partition.
>
> 3. Slide the Win 7 partition into the space vacated by the XP partition.
>
> 4. Resize the Win 7 partition to include the now empty space following it.
>
>

[mjnelson99]

P.S. on that. I deleted the factory restore partition on a restore. Win
7 did not need editing to boot on restoring. It has been the 2nd
partition originally.
Mary

On 1/17/2015 10:34 PM, MJNelson wrote:
> A slide can take a LONG time.
> Is it possible to just restore Win 7 to the place XP now has?
> Mary
>
> On 1/17/2015 7:43 PM, "Bob Coleman" wrote:
>> You should be able to:
>>
>> 1. Delete the XP boot item (probably not absolutely necessary, but good for cleanliness)
>>
>> 2. Delete the XP partition.
>>
>> 3. Slide the Win 7 partition into the space vacated by the XP partition.
>>
>> 4. Resize the Win 7 partition to include the now empty space following it.
>>
>>
>
>

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

With the Windows 7 partition configured for independent booting you would restore it using the "Set Active" and "Update Boot Partition" options. Sliding should also work and can go quite quickly on some systems. Restoring may be faster, though, especially if the drive with the image has a fast connection.

[rproto]

Thank you all. I was able to successfully uninstall XP following the suggestions posted here.

In Win 7 I opened disk management. The Win 7 partition was marked "ACTIVE, system and boot". So, I simply -

1. Right clicked on the XP partition and deleted it. This left approximately 40 Gigs of unallocated space at the front of the drive followed by the Win 7 partition.

2. I was able to reboot into Win 7 without any issue or need of repair.

3. I rebooted again and when my BING boot menu came up I entered maintenance.

4. I followed the instructions I read from the "How to Remove 8 MG of Space at the beginning of a drive posted at http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=476

5. I disabled the Aline on End Setting in BING settings.

6. In the BING "Work with Partitions" I used slide to slide the Win7 partition up by specifying "0" in the "Free Space Before" Box. (The slide took about 45 minutes).

7. In Settings I re enabled the "Aline on End Setting".

8. Next I used the "Resize" in Work With Partitions to enlarge the partition picking the "Maximum Size".

9. In the Boot Edit feature of BING I removed the Boot XP item from my Boot Menu.

10. Next I rebooted. Windows booted just fine but I got a message that I was not using a genuine copy of Windows! (I have a legit copy of Windows).

11. I right clicked on "Computer" once I was booted into Windows. It was noted there that there were changes to my Hardware in big red letters and I had to run the Windows experience score again which I did. Scrolling down it said my Windows was activated and showed my key. I went to the Windows validation site and clicked on "Validate". The results were that I had a Genuine copy of Windows. I have since rebooted and not seen the "Non Genuine copy of Window error". (Hope I don't see that again! What's up with that?)

12. Next up was of course to image the new configuration with IFW.


Thank-you all again.