How do I delete/remove an OS on dual boot?

[mckevstah]

So I have 2 hard drives, and I have it split in to about 4 partitions and I suspect that it's the reason I have performance issues in games.

Anyway, I am dual booting Win7 (my old OS, the one I want to delete) and Win8.1 (Upgrading to Win10 on release)
I'm going to copy over all the files that I want to keep and then I want to completely remove Win7 and reallocate the space to Win8.1.

How would I do that?

 

[Rookie_MIB]

Removing the partition and reallocating the space isn't that difficult, you just need to do it carefully so you don't hose both systems. Could you post a more detailed description of how it's set up right now? ie like this:

Disk 0 - partition 1 - win7
disk 0 - partition 2 - no os
disk 1 - partition 1 - win8
disk 1 - partition 2 - no os.

that will help us figure out exactly how it's set up so we can give you a very precise answer to avoid that mentioned OS hosing.

 

[06yfz450ridr]

performance issues in games arent going to from your hdd except for loading times. Your gpu and cpu are what matter.

use this http://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/

remove the partitions that you dont want leaving windows 8 and your system reserved partition.

once done resize your 8 partition.

once done go into 8 and enter msconfig.exe and go to the boot tab. delete the windows 7 entry so you no longer get prompted on boot for 7.

 

[mckevstah]

Removing the partition and reallocating the space isn't that difficult, you just need to do it carefully so you don't hose both systems. Could you post a more detailed description of how it's set up right now? ie like this:

Disk 0 - partition 1 - win7
disk 0 - partition 2 - no os
disk 1 - partition 1 - win8
disk 1 - partition 2 - no os.

that will help us figure out exactly how it's set up so we can give you a very precise answer to avoid that mentioned OS hosing.

Disk 1 MRB
D: FreeSpace Capacity 846GB
C: Windows 8 capacity 1016GB

Disk 2 MRB
*: System Reserved 100mb
E: Windows 7 capacity 931GB


I thought I had Win7 and Win8 on the same HDD, This will probably be easier than expected. Once I have copied over my files it will just be a case of formatting the entire other HDD?

 

[06yfz450ridr]

Removing the partition and reallocating the space isn't that difficult, you just need to do it carefully so you don't hose both systems. Could you post a more detailed description of how it's set up right now? ie like this:

Disk 0 - partition 1 - win7
disk 0 - partition 2 - no os
disk 1 - partition 1 - win8
disk 1 - partition 2 - no os.

that will help us figure out exactly how it's set up so we can give you a very precise answer to avoid that mentioned OS hosing.

Disk 1 MRB
D: FreeSpace Capacity 846GB
C: Windows 8 capacity 1016GB

Disk 2 MRB
*: System Reserved 100mb
E: Windows 7 capacity 931GB


I thought I had Win7 and Win8 on the same HDD, This will probably be easier than expected. Once I have copied over my files it will just be a case of formatting the entire other HDD?

yes and no, since your mbr/system reserved is on the 7 hdd wiping it will make both unbootable.

you can however wipe the second and rebuild all of via your windows 8 disk and booting from it to access a command prompt and re creating the mbr etc.

you might as well just remove the 7 partition and leave the system reserved on the second disk and do what i listed in my previous post

 

[Rookie_MIB]

Trying to think of the easiest way to do this - it's not quite as simple as cloning things around...

What might be the best idea is:

Remove the Win7 drive from the computer (just unplug the sata cable)
Take the unplugged cable and swap to your other drive.
Leave the win7 drive unplugged
Reinstall Win8 and get that up and running. You -may- be able to do a system repair on win8 which would keep the data intact but fix the 'no boot partition' issue.
Plug in the Win7 drive.
Copy your stuff over.
wipe the win7 drive.