Question : Windows 7 - Advice required to remove old Windows XP from dual boot.

Guys,
I have a system that boots off an 80Gb hard drive. The system was initially a Windows XP (SP3) setup.

When Windows 7 was released (Full release version) I popped another 80Gb hard drive into the system and installed Windows 7 on that - nice and easy to roll back if it was proving unstable!

The system appears to be booting from the 'new' Windows 7 boot manager rather than the older style XP one. The boot gives me the options you would expect, to either boot to Windows 7 or boot to XP. The second disk I put in is intepreted as the 'C' drive so it looks like windows 7 is now the primary OS and is controlling the boot process.

Now that I have a solid Windows 7 platform I no longer need to keep that old XP install. I want to clear off the original disk and use it for something more useful!

In XP, playing around with the OS bootstrap was a doddle - just modify that boot.ini file to your hearts content, but in Windows 7 I have no idea how to effectivly remove the XP bootstrap. I know I can set the timeout on the boot loader to '0' but that doesn't stop the message flashing up for a split second before continuing to load Windows 7. Besides it isnt REALLY a fix - more of a fudge that leaves dead references in my boot menu - and that would simply never do!

I am looking for the real solution to this that allows me to have full control over my booting in the same way I had full control in XP. I also need to make sure that I don't end up a blind alley with no working boot to Windows 7 either!

Any help would be grealty appreciated.

Answer : Windows 7 - Advice required to remove old Windows XP from dual boot.

Basically, from an Elevated Command Prompt, (Start, Run, {type} cmd {press CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER)

Run bcdedit to show a list of bootable OS's:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=C:
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {globalsettings}
default                 {current}
resumeobject            {a6212382-f69e-11de-ab6a-b9a2e78df1ca}
displayorder            {current}
toolsdisplayorder       {memdiag}
timeout                 30
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7
locale                  en-US
inherit                 {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence        {a6212384-f69e-11de-ab6a-b9a2e78df1ca}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {a6212382-f69e-11de-ab6a-b9a2e78df1ca}
nx                      OptIn
C:\Windows\system32>

and then type:

Bcdedit /delete {boot loader identifier}