Change Windows boot drive
I started with Vista on a computer with 3 hard drives. Vista on "drive A" and booting from "drive A".
]
Then I installed Windows 7 on "drive B"
This process retained the boot manager, etc. on drive A.
So the "boot drive" is drive A which points to Vista on drive A and the preferred Windows 7 on drive B.
I want to get rid of Vista and drive A altogether.
So, it appears I have to move the boot stuff onto drive B.
I have read how to do this but the instructions seem to be for different cases or I don't understand or there are problems.....
If I simply disconnect all the drives except drive B and run a Windows 7 Recovery Disk for a Startup Recovery or Repair, it doesn't find any OS at all and asks that I install drivers. This seems to be going in the wrong direction. Drivers????
If I run the Windows 7 DVD, the same thing happens.
Surely there are some simple instructions to move the right files from drive A to drive B (or something like that) so it will boot when drive B is the only drive in the system.
I was hoping the Startup Recovery would do this as I'd been led to believe but ran into that driver thing.....
]
Then I installed Windows 7 on "drive B"
This process retained the boot manager, etc. on drive A.
So the "boot drive" is drive A which points to Vista on drive A and the preferred Windows 7 on drive B.
I want to get rid of Vista and drive A altogether.
So, it appears I have to move the boot stuff onto drive B.
I have read how to do this but the instructions seem to be for different cases or I don't understand or there are problems.....
If I simply disconnect all the drives except drive B and run a Windows 7 Recovery Disk for a Startup Recovery or Repair, it doesn't find any OS at all and asks that I install drivers. This seems to be going in the wrong direction. Drivers????
If I run the Windows 7 DVD, the same thing happens.
Surely there are some simple instructions to move the right files from drive A to drive B (or something like that) so it will boot when drive B is the only drive in the system.
I was hoping the Startup Recovery would do this as I'd been led to believe but ran into that driver thing.....
SOLUTION
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ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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You will need the drivers for your disk controller of the mainboard. Just put those on a USB stick and load them with the DVD, then do the startup repair.
ASKER
N-WR: answer was concise and to the point and worked!
duttcom: was first and was probably a key response had I grasped its significance up front. Not F12 here tho....
giveandtake638: link has the same information that I got from N-WR but the disclaimer at the top is a bit off-putting the first time around. It's a good link.
duttcom: was first and was probably a key response had I grasped its significance up front. Not F12 here tho....
giveandtake638: link has the same information that I got from N-WR but the disclaimer at the top is a bit off-putting the first time around. It's a good link.
ASKER
There are:
bcdedit
bcdboot
bcdrec
which all appear to do similar things.
bcdedit looks the most complicated in view of what's needed.