fjgold
New Member
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2009
- Messages
- 1,109
- Thread Author
- #1
Hi Folks, I'm posting this to illustrate how I replaced\removed XP from my system in favor of Win 7.
First some background.
I've been using Win 7 since the beta as part of a multiboot setup on my Acer laptop.
The other MS OS was my old XP install.
My old XP was located at the physical start of my drive.
To install Win 7 beta, the subsequent RC and finally the Win 7 Home Premium retail I simply had created
an appropriately sized NTFS partition at the physical end of my HDD.
As each release became available I simply performed a clean install to the same partition.
I also have 4 Linux distros in the space in between the MS OS's.
I've been using the final release of Win 7 for about 9 months now and have been very happy with it.
I recently began experiencing minor but annoying issues with Win 7 so I figured it was time for a re-install.
Since I haven't used XP much since starting my adventure with Win 7 I decided to jettison XP and recover the disk space.
My plan was to ultimately install Win 7 at the start of the drive in place of XP.
I knew that the XP install contained the BCD info needed to boot Win 7 so to save time and hair pulling I decided on a
safer although somewhat round about way to do this.
Here is what I did.
I had a spare drive laying around so I partitioned it with 2 NTFS partitions.
The first partition created was the same size as the original XP\Win 7 partitions (23069 MB).
I did this so I could clone the new install to my drive later.
This was because Clonezilla, my prefered imaging program will only restore an image to a partition
the same size or larger as the cloned partition.
The 2nd partition, actually the rest of the space, I made NTFS also.
This partition would be used to install my apps and programs after instaling Win 7 to the first partition.
This keeps the Win 7 footprint fairly small, around 10 GB, (having a small footprint makes it easier to create clone images later).
I next installed the spare drive into my laptop and installed Win 7 to that first partition.
Several Windows updates later I was ready to install any needed drivers (2 actually) and
install my programs and apps.
I had previously created a folder on my other NTFS partition to install these programs in.
I had named the new folder "Program Files", the same as the default folder in C:\.
I then instructed the various program installers to install to the U:\Program Files folder.
While I was at it I relocated my C:\user library "special folders" to U:\Program Files.
These folders included the My Documents, My pictures etc. libraries.
I would later restore the data to these folders from backup.
I had a similar arrangement originally but it was a bit haphazard since it evolved over time and had program files from both
XP and Win 7.
When everything was setup like I wanted I did a disk clean up and defragged C:\.
Next, using the Clonezilla Live CD, I created an image of my new Win 7 install saving it to a USB flash drive.
Now came the "risky" part.
I reinstalled my old drive and manually copied the data\program files from the new drive's U:\Program Files folder
to the corresponding folder of my old drive.
I used a Hard Drive Dock to transfer the files\data.
Next I booted Clonezilla Live and instructed it to restore the image I had created earlier of my new Win 7 install to the partition
that contained my old XP install (the first physical partition) thereby replacing XP with my new Win 7 install.
When Clonezilla was done I restarted my computer and success, I now had a fresh copy of Win 7 at the physical start of my drive.
The Clonezilla operation removed my original boot menu so that I could only access Win 7.
I knew this would happen.
Popping in my SuperGrub CD and performing a GRUB restore fixed that.
I can now boot Win 7 and all my Linux distros like before.
The space at the end of the drive taken up by my old Win 7 install I reclaimed by formatting it to ext3 and installing another
Linux distro.
Everything works great now and the errors are history.
The above may sound risky but it really wasn't because I had Clonezilla images of all my original OS's saved just in case.
If I had messed up my original drive I could have restored everything in a matter of minutes.
As it turned out everything went fine with no issues except for the expected, but easily fixed boot manager issues.
In the event I ever need XP again I used Conezilla to restore my last XP image to the C:\partition of the spare drive
I used to create my new Win 7 install.
I only need swap drives to access XP.
I probably will only access it to periodically preform updates.
I have a Clonezilla image saved of my new Win 7 install to serve as a base image.
The next time I find I need to reinstall Win 7 (because of "software rot" like now) all I need do is restore this image
and update it.
Total time about 5 hours.
First some background.
I've been using Win 7 since the beta as part of a multiboot setup on my Acer laptop.
The other MS OS was my old XP install.
My old XP was located at the physical start of my drive.
To install Win 7 beta, the subsequent RC and finally the Win 7 Home Premium retail I simply had created
an appropriately sized NTFS partition at the physical end of my HDD.
As each release became available I simply performed a clean install to the same partition.
I also have 4 Linux distros in the space in between the MS OS's.
I've been using the final release of Win 7 for about 9 months now and have been very happy with it.
I recently began experiencing minor but annoying issues with Win 7 so I figured it was time for a re-install.
Since I haven't used XP much since starting my adventure with Win 7 I decided to jettison XP and recover the disk space.
My plan was to ultimately install Win 7 at the start of the drive in place of XP.
I knew that the XP install contained the BCD info needed to boot Win 7 so to save time and hair pulling I decided on a
safer although somewhat round about way to do this.
Here is what I did.
I had a spare drive laying around so I partitioned it with 2 NTFS partitions.
The first partition created was the same size as the original XP\Win 7 partitions (23069 MB).
I did this so I could clone the new install to my drive later.
This was because Clonezilla, my prefered imaging program will only restore an image to a partition
the same size or larger as the cloned partition.
The 2nd partition, actually the rest of the space, I made NTFS also.
This partition would be used to install my apps and programs after instaling Win 7 to the first partition.
This keeps the Win 7 footprint fairly small, around 10 GB, (having a small footprint makes it easier to create clone images later).
I next installed the spare drive into my laptop and installed Win 7 to that first partition.
Several Windows updates later I was ready to install any needed drivers (2 actually) and
install my programs and apps.
I had previously created a folder on my other NTFS partition to install these programs in.
I had named the new folder "Program Files", the same as the default folder in C:\.
I then instructed the various program installers to install to the U:\Program Files folder.
While I was at it I relocated my C:\user library "special folders" to U:\Program Files.
These folders included the My Documents, My pictures etc. libraries.
I would later restore the data to these folders from backup.
I had a similar arrangement originally but it was a bit haphazard since it evolved over time and had program files from both
XP and Win 7.
When everything was setup like I wanted I did a disk clean up and defragged C:\.
Next, using the Clonezilla Live CD, I created an image of my new Win 7 install saving it to a USB flash drive.
Now came the "risky" part.
I reinstalled my old drive and manually copied the data\program files from the new drive's U:\Program Files folder
to the corresponding folder of my old drive.
I used a Hard Drive Dock to transfer the files\data.
Next I booted Clonezilla Live and instructed it to restore the image I had created earlier of my new Win 7 install to the partition
that contained my old XP install (the first physical partition) thereby replacing XP with my new Win 7 install.
When Clonezilla was done I restarted my computer and success, I now had a fresh copy of Win 7 at the physical start of my drive.
The Clonezilla operation removed my original boot menu so that I could only access Win 7.
I knew this would happen.
Popping in my SuperGrub CD and performing a GRUB restore fixed that.
I can now boot Win 7 and all my Linux distros like before.
The space at the end of the drive taken up by my old Win 7 install I reclaimed by formatting it to ext3 and installing another
Linux distro.
Everything works great now and the errors are history.
The above may sound risky but it really wasn't because I had Clonezilla images of all my original OS's saved just in case.
If I had messed up my original drive I could have restored everything in a matter of minutes.
As it turned out everything went fine with no issues except for the expected, but easily fixed boot manager issues.
In the event I ever need XP again I used Conezilla to restore my last XP image to the C:\partition of the spare drive
I used to create my new Win 7 install.
I only need swap drives to access XP.
I probably will only access it to periodically preform updates.
I have a Clonezilla image saved of my new Win 7 install to serve as a base image.
The next time I find I need to reinstall Win 7 (because of "software rot" like now) all I need do is restore this image
and update it.
Total time about 5 hours.
