Help. Cant Delete Old Primary XP Partition after Win 7 Install

[Emilford]

Hi Guys. I am having a tough time here. I have an older hp pc that came with Windows XP. Last Year I upgraded it to Windows 7, but to be safe I installed 7 on a newly created partition.

Problem is is now that im satisfied with 7 , I want to delete my old xp install, but the partition is still labeled as primary.

It wont let me just delete/format the old partition, so i was wondering what steps do i take.
Picture of the problem:
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[Emilford]

I already did that. I just want to free up all that extra space that xp is taking up
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/3281/clipboard01gwy.jpg

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

Do you have a folder called \boot on the XP partition
If so this is the Windows 7 boot loader. (must not be deleted)

Primary is default partition type, formatting it will not change this
It will also be marked active.

You may be able to delete the \Windows XP folder and XP \Program files folders to recover space on that drive
BUT back up carefully before doing anything drastic


If you manage to format the XP Partition Windows 7 will not boot up

You would need a Windows 7 DVD or a Windows 7 System Repair disk (CD/USB)
to repair the Windows 7 startup

Alternative strategy while in XP,
empty recycle bin
uninstall all un-necessary programs,
run disk cleanup
install ccleaner to clean out cache from IE, Firefox etc

also run chkdsk on XP partition
empty recycle bin again


Then boot from Parted Magic and make XP Partition much smaller and Win 7 much larger.
This may break Win 7 boot manager so have either Win 7 DVD or System Repair disk ready



regards
Mike Barnes

 

[Emilford]

That was my next idea, to just delete the \Windows XP folder and XP \Documents & setting folder then make the partition smaller

 

[Emilford]

Could i just clone my windows 7 install, & use that to the replace both the old xp & 7 versions