Windows 10 howto; remove xp off 2nd hdd

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caturpiller

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Feb 17, 2016
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hello,

In an effort to renew my wifes desktop, I bought a SSD and installed Win10 on it. Everything is fine.
Her factory HDD still has her factory winxp on it. I created a 25Gig partition and moved music etc to the storage partition of the winxp hdd.

How do I remove winxp ?
so just to be clear , there are 2 hdds in her computer ; 1 ssd with win10 and 1 hdd with winxp.



Also, I plan on gettting a new SSHD for my computer. What is the best way to install win10 on a fresh SSHD ?
I have my win8 install cds at home , can i bypass having to install win8 and then having to upgrade to win10? Do they let us just install direct yet? Or do we still have to do it the hard way ? Thx.
 
Solution
Hi

You need to get EasyBCD to remove Windows XP from the boot menu.
It's important to remove the Windows XP install from the other drive so that it's no longer in the boot menu, even if it's not set as the primary OS.

If you don't remove it from the boot menu and then delete the OS everything goes really bad.

EasyBCD is easy to use and free.

It should look like this when you get done with only Windows 10 shown in the boot list.

Link Removed

To migrate the OS to another hard drive you need some kind of migration software to do it easily.

There may be a free option but I use EaseUS Todo for my backup software, and it's very reliable.

Best free backup software for Windows 10/8.1/8/7/vista - EaseUS Todo Backup Free...
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Hi

You need to get EasyBCD to remove Windows XP from the boot menu.
It's important to remove the Windows XP install from the other drive so that it's no longer in the boot menu, even if it's not set as the primary OS.

If you don't remove it from the boot menu and then delete the OS everything goes really bad.

EasyBCD is easy to use and free.

It should look like this when you get done with only Windows 10 shown in the boot list.

Link Removed

To migrate the OS to another hard drive you need some kind of migration software to do it easily.

There may be a free option but I use EaseUS Todo for my backup software, and it's very reliable.

Best free backup software for Windows 10/8.1/8/7/vista - EaseUS Todo Backup Free

You need the home version to do the disk transfer, but I see there's a trial version that you might be able to use once.

I use the free version to make system images of my C:\ drive in case of emergencies, I can't say that I've done the disk transfer thing myself.

I'd recommend that you install and use the free version, even if you don't want to buy the pay version to get the transfer capability.

This it kind of the thing I preach about but having a System Image file has saved me from hours of work many times over the years.

If everyone would make a system backup there would be a lot less posts on forums like this.

Mike
 
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Solution
I looked up easyBCD Community edition and installed. 5 seconds later I had deleted the XP entry from the boot order.

Save and restart into desktop. For some reason my bios has my sata option as raid.

So now my boot up is; Bios/intel raid menu/windows boot manager. In windows boot manager , I have 2 options , win10 or MS Windows recovery console. I can only assume that recovery console is asking me whether I'd like to reinstate the xp to my boot order.

2 out of 5 restarts failed to boot citing error Inaccesable boot device. I feel this has something to do with the raid option in bios.
5th restart triggered windows to preparing automatic repair/ diagnosing your pc.

I'm logged in now and I assume I am safe to delete the winxp partition.
 
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windows key+x to bring up disk management

Attempt to delete winxp partition , error Virtual disk manager: Format is not allowed on the current boot, system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume.


My attempt to delete everything in the xp partition managed to freeze the computer lol

Created a restore point on the computer at least.
 
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Hi

I don't have any personal experience with Raid.
I've never run a Raid setup myself, but someone here will know how to fix that.

Here is a tutorial with photos about how to disable Raid on your computer.
I think that this is what you probably need to do on your computer to get rid of the boot up menu and have it just log into Windows 10.

How to Disable RAID

You might want to run a search for How to I disable Raid for you specific computer.
It would probably show exactly what to change on your computer.

If this isn't what you need you may want to start a new post asking specifically about the Raid issue.

I'm sure that someone here knows all about this.

MIke
 
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I don't suspect I was in raid. Yet what I think happened is, I must have installed win10 with the old drive still connected and win10 used the old hdd for its efi boot info. I deleted winxp along with that info and sealed my fate.

I'll do the re-install dance with this turkey later. When all else fails, burn it to the ground.
 
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If I follow the story correctly (?) You are ridding yourself of Xp and have just mad a new install of Win 10.

I would start at square one again. Only have the SDD installed and then reinstall Windows 10.
 
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Hi

As Dave said, when I installed Windows 10 on my SSD, I disconnected my other hard drives and then did the install.

When I reconnected the other drives after Windows 10 was up and running, there was no connection to the previous installation and I was able to just go into Drive Manager and remove the partition, and merge it back into the main drive.

I did check it out with EasyBCD before I removed it but it didn't have any reference to the old install any longer.

Mike
 
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Greetings all!

SO I bought a nice 17 inch laptop off CL for 50 bucks. It has windows vista on it, which doesn't seem to upgrade to win10.

I plan on buying a new SSHD for this laptop. How does someone get windows 10 on a new hard drive? If its too much work, I'll simply load Linux Mint on this laptop, since I only plan to use this for movies/youtube.
 
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Install the drive, boot to the Windows 10 media and select advanced and select the SSD and it should install on there.
 
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oh ok, so they don't make you upgrade on this . I was confused because because it seemed like MS wanted you to install on top of a previous operating system.

So MS now allows a clean install from scratch.

Do i have to buy windows 10 ? or can i use the media tool to install win10 to a usb stick and install for free?
 
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Hi

If you have already upgraded that computer to Windows 10 and have loged in with your Microsoft account then they will let you clean install and not ask for a registration number.

Write the ISO file to a DVD and use it to start a normal install procedure.
If it asks you to put in a registration number just ignore it and go ahead it will take care of it when you log in.

If you hadn't previously upgraded on that computer, you would have to buy a copy of Windows 10.

Mike
 
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Hi

If this is a Vista Computer Then you do have to buy a copy of Windows 10 and install it in the normal way.
Just put in the disk and start the new installation process.

It will install over your current Vista installation.

Make sure that you backup Everything, (this means favorites, email address books, any document files, images, music, etc. anything that's on your C:\ drive) because it will completely blank your hard drive.

You might want to just backup your entire Users, and Documents folders just to be safe, you can delete them later once you are sure there is nothing in it that you need to retrieve.

And don't forget Game Saves if they aren't in the User's folder.

Before you buy a Windows 10 disk, read this article, it may not be a good idea the upgrade an older computer...

What You Need to Know About Upgrading a Windows Vista PC to Windows 10

Mike
 
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