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Old situation: Machine had 2 232 GB HDDs:
- HD 0 contains a 70 MB OEM partition and a 232 GB Windows XP boot partition
- HD 1 has one partition (data disk)

I bought a new SSD, added it to my machine, let Windows 7 install on the SSD.
I then had a boot menu and could boot into either Win7 (default) or Win XP.

Now I want to re-use HD 0 as one data partition.
I thought it would be as simple as going into disk management, kill those 2 partitions on HD 0, make a new one. Here's the disk management info:

enter image description here

As you can see the 'Remove volume' option is grayed out.

I tried/checked:

That last step was a mistake, now my computer would not boot. From a boot disk I could set it active again using diskpart; so now I'm back to square 1:

How can I re-use the entire HD 0 as a data disk?
(It would be OK if I could just format it and leave that little OEM partition, but format is also disabled)

My situation seems similar to this post without answers.

My boot sequence is 1) Floppy 2) Onboard CD 3) Onboard SATA.
My SATA controllers (BIOS setting) have the HDDs on 0 (the D: HDD disk 1) and 2 (the E: HDD disk 0), the SSD disk 2 on 3. All AHCI BIOS.

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  • Does disconnecting the XP drive render the system unbootable? It appears the XP drive is somehow involved in the boot process. I would try disconnecting the XP drive and running startup repair off a Win7 boot disk, which should ensure that the bootloader is on the Win7 drive.
    – MetaNova
    Jun 21, 2014 at 12:27
  • That did not work. When I disconnect the SATA 2 drive (the one with the XP boot) and boot from a startup CD I only get the option Windows Setup. There is nothing to 'repair'.
    – Jan Doggen
    Jun 28, 2014 at 9:12

2 Answers 2

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1) Make E: active again using diskpart.exe.

2) Boot to Windows 7.

3) In Windows 7 - on administrative command prompt:

bcdboot c:\windows /s c:

This will create boot files on c: which is active and bootable partition.

4) Restart. In BIOS set SSD (111,79 GB) as first disk.

5) Reboot - boot should go directly to Win 7.

6) In Windows 7 again but booted with boot manager and Boot Configuration Data(BCD) on same disk as Windows 7 !

Now you can format all other disks, detach them or whatever.

If you want a dual boot Win7+XP copy following files to C:(Windows7) from E:(XP)

\ntldr, \boot.ini, \ntdetect.com

and add a loader entry for XP in Windows 7 BCD - you could use Visual BCD Editor.

Start the tool. In tool type F9-key and confirm this will create a boot menu and loader entry for XP.

Note:

Windows 7 (or Windows XP) boot files should be always on active partition on first disk for a successful start up. Eventually boot.ini has to be adjusted to reflect position of disk with XP (in this case it will move to second or third position - see ARCPaths utility for details on amending boot.ini).

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  • This did not work yet. BCDBoot went fine, but after setting E: inactive I was back to the boot failure. What do you mean with "Set SSD as first disk"? My boot sequence is 1) Floppy 2) Onboard CD 3) Onboard SATA. My SATA controllers have the HDDs on 0 and 2, the SSD on 3. All AHCI BIOS
    – Jan Doggen
    Jun 23, 2014 at 18:58
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I think the problem is that the partition is marked as "active" So in order to delete the partition it has to be made inactive first.

try this:

1.) Start>Run..

2.) “CMD”

3.) “diskpart” to load up the utility

4.) “list disk” to list all the disks

5.) “Select disk X” where X is the desired disk

6.) “list partition” to list partitions on the selected disk

7.) “select partition X” where X is the desired partition that is currently marked active

8.) “inactive”
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  • As I wrote in my post, making it inactive (exactly as you describe) stops my machine from booting.
    – Jan Doggen
    Jun 21, 2014 at 14:26

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