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Remove windows 7 installation on old hard drive

I have searched for the answer to this question and I see that it is marked as answered, however the suggestions there do not work in my case. I installed an SSD and did a fresh install of Win 7 x64 on it and made it the system drive. I have the old Win 7 system drive as a second drive. I want to delete the windows folder on the old system drive. There are a lot of data files on the drive that I really don't want to delete or move off the drive. I was able to delete all the user folders from the drive, then I tried unlocker - no dice I saw in that post that UBCD would work so I made a USB and booted form it. Howeevr I don't see any tools that obviously are used to delete the windows system folder. Can I use UBCD of Is there another method to delete the old windows folder?

orerockon

ASKER

UPDATE: I had tried booting to the UBCD from USB on my laptop as a test (I try most things that might effect the OS on the laptop first since I don't really care if the OS fails) and it worked. I tried it on the PC that I want to remove the old Win 7 folder from the second non-system drive and now I can't boot from the USB drive at all, despite making it the first boot device in the BIOS (this is on a Dell XPS 720 with the latest BIOS flash). It simply doesn't want to boot from it and instead presents the usual boot menu for the hard drive.

IanTh

did the usb drive ever work can you test it on another system?

orerockon

ASKER

Like I said I tested it on a win 7 laptop and it worked just fine.

BCipollone

Right click the folder and change the Owner to you... then change the permissions on the folder / child folders to allow you full permissions. Then delete it.

orerockon

ASKER

Yes I tried that as the first thing, but it doesn't let me delete anything in the windows folder. All users have full control except for CREATOR OWNER which has full control for this folder and subfolders only. I deleted CREATOR OWNER and when I try to delete any files or folders it says I need permission from Administrator. I am always logged in as Administrator (the real one, not the fake one).

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

orerockon

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LeeTutor

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