Removing my Windows Vista Partition

[Diagnostics]

So I accidentaly installed Windows 7 on a different partition than where I had Windows Vista.

Is there a certain way I can go about removing the Vista partition? Like using the install disk to format tha HD Vista is on?

Dont wanna screw up my boot, which is why I am asking. Figured there are some techies here that could give some good advice.

I have already tried formatting from the disk management screen and it won't let me... And I had a battle with the black screen of death; but seemed to have won it by lowering my UAC down a level. Every time the UAC kicked in with the dim screen it would send me tothe black screen.

Any help is appreciated.

[digihax]

Originally Posted by Diagnostics So I accidentaly installed Windows 7 on a different partition than where I had Windows Vista. Is there a certain way I can go about removing the Vista partition? Like using the install disk to format tha HD Vista is on? Dont wanna screw up my boot, which is why I am asking. Figured there are some techies here that could give some good advice. I have already tried formatting from the disk management screen and it won't let me... And I had a battle with the black screen of death; but seemed to have won it by lowering my UAC down a level. Every time the UAC kicked in with the dim screen it would send me tothe black screen. Any help is appreciated.

LoL, never heard of black screen of death, i know there's a blue screen of death though...

[Xrystal]

Rofl, I suspect that is the black screen of death you get when you've killed the boot sector and you're stuck at the boot up screen failing to get into windows.

My mother asked the same question. She read somewhere that you can move the boot files to the drive you wanted and tell it to use that to do its work instead of the old location. But, seeing as I had no personal idea how it worked she went the safest route and just reinstalled Windows 7 rofl.

[NitraMo]

I just recently battled with the same problem myself.

I had win7 on one hdd and vista on another, my problem was that the boot sector was still on the vista hdd when I wanted it to be on the win7 hdd one, I assume your problem is similiar.

The solution that finally worked for me was unplugging the vista hdd, and then running the repair tool on the win7 disc, that way a boot sector was created on the win7 hdd and I was able to boot into win7 with that. Make sure you set up the boot order in the BIOS correctly!
Now I wasn't keeping the vista partition, so I had earlier formatted that one (the boot sector was still on wrong hdd though) but this fixed everything.

You shouldn't have to worry about messing up your boot sector, booting from the win7 disc should always be able to save you. It has never failed me atleast.


On another computer I have run into a much more weird problem. I have win7 and vista on the same hdd but different partitions, both win7 and vista think that they are the C: drive and vista wins the boot fight and simply boots itself never giving me the option to chose win7.
But simply booting from the win7 disc makes the boot correct, I don't even have to push a key at the push a key if you want to boot from the disc part.

[Akryn]

Originally Posted by NitraMo I have win7 and vista on the same hdd but different partitions, both win7 and vista think that they are the C: drive and vista wins the boot fight and simply boots itself never giving me the option to chose win7. But simply booting from the win7 disc makes the boot correct, I don't even have to push a key at the push a key if you want to boot from the disc part.

That's because you're really booting off the CD and the CD's bootloader is picking the Win7 part. after you don't press a key. You can probably fix it by marking the Win7 part. as active. You'd then have to use bcdedit to add the Vista part. as a second boot option if you want to dual-boot still. There are GUI bcdedit frontends that you can find via Google if you don't want to mess w/ the CLI.

As for the OP, the easiest way - as mentioned - is to boot off the Win7 disk, format the partition (or delete it and resize the Win7 partition) and then run startup repair which will fix the bootloader stuff for you.

[Diagnostics]

Lol wow, didn't know people responded to this. I ended up just reformatting and everything works fine now.

As for the Black Screen of Death, it was caused by a bad updated Microsoft put out that scewed up a registry key. When some programs accessed it for permission to run it basicaly locked down your PC by making the screen black.

But, thanks everyone for replying.

[NitraMo]

Originally Posted by Akryn That's because you're really booting off the CD and the CD's bootloader is picking the Win7 part. after you don't press a key. You can probably fix it by marking the Win7 part. as active. You'd then have to use bcdedit to add the Vista part. as a second boot option if you want to dual-boot still. There are GUI bcdedit frontends that you can find via Google if you don't want to mess w/ the CLI.

Yeah, I know that the disc's own bootloader is reading the boot file, didn't want to get too detailed though.
Didn't know about marking win7 as the active partition though. Going to try that and see if it fixes it. It probably should, as currently the vista bootloader is reading the boot file created by win7, and the formats are incompatible. Making the win7 partition the active one should make win7 read it instead, right?
It isn't very important though, only keeping the vista install because I haven't bothered to get the program that I use to sync my phone with my computer to work on my win7 install yet (I remember it was somewhat painful to make it work on vista).