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Opt out of dual boot system

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Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Clayton » Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:06 am

2 years ago Bob helped me set a dual boot system for XP and Win7. Well now I am going thru serveal changes/problems and need help. First is I am ready to go back to only Win7 and have removed most everthing from the XP drive except the OS. Bob or someone help guide me in what I need to do to have it boot smoothly and directly to Win7 without the question to select. I believe it was set up in the BCDedit? What do I need to do to undo this. :-8
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Bob » Wed Mar 21, 2012 2:56 pm

Hi, Clayton!

How you would do that depends on where the boot manager was installed. It could be on either the Windows XP drive or the Windows 7 drive. If I'm remembering correctly, I think yours is the XP drive. In which case, you will need the Windows 7 installation disk. You still have that, right?

The issue is that BCDEdit can be used to remove the Windows XP entry in either case, but it doesn't change the location of the boot manager or it's data store. If it's on the XP drive and you format, delete the data store, or remove the drive, you won't be able to boot. It's better and safer to install the boot manager on the Windows 7 drive. Then, you can do what ever you want with the old XP drive.

First thing to do is check the bios boot order. Are you booting from the XP drive or the Windows 7 drive. The boot manager is most likely on that drive. You can confirm that by disconnecting the xp drive and booting from the Windows 7 drive. If the boot manager is on the XP drive, the boot will fail.

If the boot manager is on the Windows 7 drive, use BCDEdit to remove the XP entry. Go to Start>All Programs>Accessories and right click on the Command Prompt entry. Select Run as Administrator. Enter the following command:

bcdedit /delete {ntldr} /f /cleanup

The next time you boot, you should go directly to Windows 7 with no selection dialog.

If the boot manager is on the XP drive, disconnect the XP drive and boot from the Windows 7 installation disk. run the Startup Repair Utility. Startup Repair only fixes one thing at a time and there are three things that need to get fixed. So you'll need to go through the boot process 3 times. But, this is the only way that installs everything that is supposed to be installed.

When you get the install splash screen where you specify the language and other preferences, click on Next.

On the next screen, click on Repair your Computer. It will automatically start a system recovery scan. When the scan is complete, make sure the Use Recovery Tools option is selected and press next.

On the next screen, select Startup Repair. It will start a repair scan to identify what needs to be fixed. It will stop at the first item found. If you want to see what it fixed, click on View diagnostics and repair detail. The item fixed will be listed at the bottom of the list. Click Finish and then Restart.

Repeat two more times.

Set the bios to boot from the Windows 7 drive. It should now boot into Windows 7 with no selection prompt.

Oh, and just to be safe, be sure you have a backup of the drive before you do anything.
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Clayton » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:28 pm

Thanks Bob. I believe the boot manager is on the Win7 drive, but I will start by disconnecting the XP drive and see what happens. I know in the BIOS, the 7 drive is first and when the selection comes up, the choices are "Windows 7" and "previous versions" I will follow up when I can do it. Thanks again. :tup:
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Clayton » Sat Mar 24, 2012 8:35 am

Okay Bob here are my results: I disconnected the XP drive and it wouldn't boot. Next I disconnected all drives except the C: I ran the repair three times from the installation disk as instructed. Set the BIOS to Win 7 and rebooted. I get to a window with two choices. They both say Windows 7 Professional (recovered). The top one is the default, but if you select it, it fails and asks for the installation disl. If you select the second one it boots fine. Then I went to the command prompt to clear the bcdedit and this is what I get.

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit/delete {ntldr} /f/cleanup
This entry cannot be deleted unless the /f switch is specified on the command
line. Run bcdedit /? for more information.
Access is denied.

C:\Windows\system32>

What am I doing wrong?
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Bob » Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:31 pm

Don't need to use the bcdedit delete command to get rid of the {ntldr} entry because you created a brand new data store on the Windows 7 drive and it doesn't have one. But, the reason you got that particular message appears to be because you didn't put a space between the /f and the /cleanup.

We can remove the extraneous entry, but I need to know what's in the data store. Run the following BCDEdit command:

bcdedit /enum /v > c:\data.txt

That will create a file at the root of your c: drive containing the data. Either upload it here or copy and paste the contents of the text file to this thread. Again, the bcdedit command needs to be run from a command prompt that is run as administrator, and you need to make sure there are spaces between the operands.
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Clayton » Sat Mar 24, 2012 6:11 pm

I ran it several times wih and without spaces and get the same results each time. If there are supposed to be spaces at certain places let me know.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.


C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit/enum/v>c:\data.txt

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /enum /v>c:\data.txt

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit /enum /v > c:\data.txt

C:\Windows\system32>
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Bob » Sat Mar 24, 2012 7:38 pm

That last one looks like it should have worked if I'm seeing the spaces correctly. There should be a space after "bcdedit", after "/enum", after "/v", and after ">".

You won't see output on the screen, it's been redirected to "c:\data.txt". Did that file get created and have something in it?
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Clayton » Sat Mar 24, 2012 8:50 pm

Yes it did. It looks like there is two boot loaders. See below.


Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=C:
path \bootmgr
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
displayorder {e1d45204-7563-11e1-b251-91b021a99265}
{e1d45205-7563-11e1-b251-91b021a99265}
timeout 30

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {e1d45204-7563-11e1-b251-91b021a99265}
device unknown
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7 Professional (recovered)
locale en-US
osdevice unknown
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {4ab45ece-75b3-11e1-9c02-806e6f6e6963}

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {e1d45205-7563-11e1-b251-91b021a99265}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7 Professional (recovered)
locale en-US
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {81d3ce1b-75b7-11e1-92fa-806e6f6e6963}
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Bob » Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:48 am

Yes, there are two boot loaders. The first one is the one that won't boot and is the one we want to delete. The following bcdedit command should do that.

bcdedit /delete {e1d45204-7563-11e1-b251-91b021a99265} /cleanup

Be careful entering the command, the identifier of the boot manager we want to keep differs by only 1 digit. You don't want to delete the wrong one by accident. There should be a space after "bcdedit", after "/delete", and after "{e1d45204-7563-11e1-b251-91b021a99265}"

Once the the extraneous boot loader is gone, there will only be one boot loader and you should be able to boot directly into Windows 7 without the selection menu appearing.
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Clayton » Mon Mar 26, 2012 1:04 pm

Well Bob, once again your expertise is unsurpassed. \:D/ It now works perfectly. I am sure no other site but muvipix could have provided the answers I need. Muvipix rocks! :tup:
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Re: Opt out of dual boot system

Postby Bob » Tue Mar 27, 2012 12:55 am

Thanks, I'm glad that I could help!
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