Remove or Uninstall Windows 7 beta from Dual Boot and Clean install Windows 7 RC
If you are new here, Subscribe to Full Feeds or by Email or follow us in Twitter and receive free daily updates on Office and Windows Tips, Tricks and Tweaks..
If you have Windows 7 beta in a dual boot system along with Windows Vista then probably you might want to update or upgrade it to Windows 7 RC. There are two options to upgrade to Windows 7 RC. The quick way is to fool the installer by changing the MinClient build number to 7000 as explained in Engineering Windows 7 by MSDN.
But the best way and suggested way is to do a clean install of Windows 7 RC. Or you might want to upgrade Vista and just remove the Windows 7 beta. In any case here is tutorial on how to safely remove or uninstall Windows 7 beta from Dual boot system.
Note: Before removing the Windows 7 from the partition, you may want to save the Windows 7 settings, files and users to transfer to the new Windows 7.
The quick way to remove the OS from a partition is by going to System Configuration.
Go to Start –> type msconfig –> Click Ok, if UAC prompts.
Go to Boot tab and click on Windows 7 and click Delete.
To be on the safe side, I recommend using the freeware to manage the Vista Bootloader. I personally use EasyBCD, if I want to install other OS including Ubuntu or Fedora or other linux OS. This gives a better control of the boot loader.
Under view settings, you can view the OS currently in the MBR (Master Boot Record)
Go to Add/Remove Entries and choose Windows 7 and click Delete.
Go to Manage Bootloader and choose Reinstall the Vista Bootloader and click Write MBR. This will overwrite the MBR so that you dont have any issue with removing an OS from the boot loader.
Now that the Windows 7 has been removed, you can format that partition.
Its similar to post where we saw how to partition in Windows Vista. Go to Start –> Type Computer Management –> Go to Disk Management. Right click the drive where Windows 7 was installed and click Format.
Now you can either use that partition to clean install another OS or Windows 7 or you can delete that partition and extend it with another partition.
[...] [This post is written in a series to help uninstalling Windows 7 beta and clean install 7 RC] [...]
I followed the directions above to remove Windows 7 from the bootloader and the partition on my dualboot Vista/Win 7. I got to
the last step where I was to format the partition where Win 7 was.
It’s now just an unallocated partion. When I right click on it, I am not given the format dialog, I am given the same dialog as when I created the simple volume, e.g. New Simple Volume, New Spanned Volume (grayed out), New striped volume (grayed out), properties, and Help.
What happened to the format option? How do I reclaim the unallocated partition.
The reason I’m doing this is that I originally created a simple volume of 18GB that would just hold Win 7, so now I wanted to increase the partition size so I could install some apps. I think I’m going to like Win 7, but I’m stuck not being able to reclaim the unallocated partition. Please help
@Truman, If you want to increase the partition you have, you should already have some other free unallocated space. So first you have to shrink another volume and then you will be able to extend this partition along with that.
check how to shrink or extend partition in vista for more
I didn’t think of that. I’ll give that a try. but why wasn’t I able
to format or delete the other unallocated partition?
Thanks
[...] Remove or unistall Windows 7 beta from dula boot [...]
could I use this method, i mean use easyBCD, to remove windows 7 from dual boot with windows xp? thank you.
@danu, Yes you can use this method.
easyBCD DOES NOT work with win xp.
Hello. I have a question here. If I delete the OS from dual boot, will my files that are located in that particular partition be deleted too? Does this method just remove the windows 7 OS, or everything including the files in that partition?
Appreciate your reply!
I’ve not gotten any Lytebyte news letters lately. Have you just been inactive ? I suspect you’ll be very busy now that Win 7 is out. I would like to see detailed information about upgrading from Windows XP Pro? Is there a safe way to do it without having to having to reload all of your applications ?