Windows 7 Help with Boot Manager please

[TRSS]

Hi, folks : D I hope this is the right area here for me as new user.

Here is my issue:
I have got a single hdd which contains two partitions with one operating system on each partition. The first one holds Windows XP and Windows 7 on the second one. Now that I do not use XP anymore, I plan to remove the first partition. What I did so far was to mark the second partition as active because I thought it would move the boot manager there. Though, it looks like the boot manager was still on the first partition. As I want to keep the boot manager of course, I wonder if I can simply move the concerning files over. Question is if this is the right method and if yes which files I need to take in order to make the boot work.

thanks for your help
+ TRSS

 

[patcooke]

Easy way out if you have the Win 7 install disk is to remove the XP partition and then boot from install disk and run startup repair.

 

[TRSS]

@patcooke thank you for your quick help.
What am I supposed to do once I get into the repair menu? I don't know if it will be self-explanatory or what I can expect from doing there. I would like to know now because I won't be able to use these forums then, will I?

 

[patcooke]

Just to make sure you can access startup repair do a dry run - before you make any changes make sure that you can boot from the install disk and can select startup repair from the menu and just stop short of running it (not that it would do any harm given what you're trying to do).

 

[TRSS]

Took a while, pardon for that.
I tried loading the disc before booting and it seems to work fine. I had a look at the menu and found this screen

Spoiler

Link Removed

Is this what we need?


P.S. I am glad that Bulletin Board Code works here : D Is there a list of forums specific commands?

 

[patcooke]

Yes, that's the one you'll need.

 

[TRSS]

So uhm, I clicked that and it actually did nothing. Brought up the Finish button and took me back to that menu. I checked the boot files' location which stayed the same.

 

[patcooke]

As it should - as I said earlier "select startup repair from the menu and just stop short of running it (not that it would do any harm given what you're trying to do)." - it will "repair" the current startup but as there is currently nothing wrong with it nothing will change!

 

[TRSS]

How do I get rid of the first partition which holds Windows XP?
I tried formatting it but it keeps saying that this format is not allowed [NTFS with standard cluster size].

Edit: Can I simply delete it? I am not sure because I read other guides about this topic with different methods but I don't know which one I shall choose.

 

[patcooke]

Yes you can just delete it. Use Easeus Partition Manager (free home edition), free from here:

http://www.easeus.com/download/partition-manager.html

Then you'll need your startup repair.

 

[Saltgrass]

You should just be able to make the Windows 7 partition active and then run the Startup Repair options as Pat recommends.

If you have a problem, you can change the designation from the command prompt in the Recovery Environment using Diskpart. After you select the disk and then select the partition, you can use the active or inactive commands to change its status.

Diskpart
lis dis
sel dis 0
lis par
sel par 2
active

We don't have a Disk Mangement picture to check, so use the Disk number you need from the List Disk command and the Partition number from the List Partition command. Type exit to leave Diskpart

You can get to the Command prompt window by using Shift+F10 from the first window after booting to the Install Media. If you have a problem, you can use this to change the active status back to the original boot partition.