operating systems on different drives

Hi all. My computer originally came with one 500gb hd(drive C) with the
39 mb dell utlities drive. (dell inspiron) and xp pro32 bit. I added a
2nd 500 gb hd and put windows 7 on it. So now I have dual boot. What I
want to do and cannot seem to is get rid of the first drive. When I pull
it out and set it to boot from the second it wont. Is that because the
first drive has the boot information or something. What I want is to
just have the second drive and just windows 7. Just wondering if there
is a way to do this or did I just install it wrong at the beginning.

"jschultznorth" wrote in message
...

Hi all. My computer originally came with one 500gb hd(drive C) with the
39 mb dell utlities drive. (dell inspiron) and xp pro32 bit. I added a
2nd 500 gb hd and put windows 7 on it. So now I have dual boot. What I
want to do and cannot seem to is get rid of the first drive. When I pull
it out and set it to boot from the second it wont.

Better repost amplifying how you "set it to boot."
Was this a BIOS setting? (Dunno about Dell
but ThinkCentre BIOS enables half a dozen
alternative boot sources, including HDDs, USB, etc.)

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Remove the old hard drive; then run a Windows 7 startup repair on the
new drive using the Windows 7 installation DVD.

On Sun, 27 Mar 2011 13:26:48 -0500, jschultznorth
wrote:


Hi all. My computer originally came with one 500gb hd(drive C) with the
39 mb dell utlities drive. (dell inspiron) and xp pro32 bit. I added a
2nd 500 gb hd and put windows 7 on it. So now I have dual boot. What I
want to do and cannot seem to is get rid of the first drive. When I pull
it out and set it to boot from the second it wont. Is that because the
first drive has the boot information or something. What I want is to
just have the second drive and just windows 7. Just wondering if there
is a way to do this or did I just install it wrong at the beginning.

"jschultznorth" wrote in message
...

Hi all. My computer originally came with one 500gb hd(drive C) with
the
39 mb dell utlities drive. (dell inspiron) and xp pro32 bit. I added a
2nd 500 gb hd and put windows 7 on it. So now I have dual boot. What I
want to do and cannot seem to is get rid of the first drive. When I
pull
it out and set it to boot from the second it wont. Is that because the
first drive has the boot information or something. What I want is to
just have the second drive and just windows 7. Just wondering if there
is a way to do this or did I just install it wrong at the beginning.

The boot files for Windows 7 are in the root of the XP partition or
drive, so it won't currently boot without that drive present. You need
to put the drive back in, then follow the procedure described in the
links below to copy the boot files and enable the Windows 7 boot manager
on the Windows 7 drive:

Video: Remove Windows XP from a dual-boot configuration with Windows 7
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/itd...windows-7/1306

Migrate to Windows 7 from an XP dual-boot configuration
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/win...iguration/1751

--
Glen Ventura
MS MVP Oct. 2002 - Sept. 2009
CompTIA A+
http://dts-l.net/

jschultznorth wrote:
Hi all. My computer originally came with one 500gb hd(drive C) with the
39 mb dell utlities drive. (dell inspiron) and xp pro32 bit. I added a
2nd 500 gb hd and put windows 7 on it. So now I have dual boot. What I
want to do and cannot seem to is get rid of the first drive. When I pull
it out and set it to boot from the second it wont. Is that because the
first drive has the boot information or something. What I want is to
just have the second drive and just windows 7. Just wondering if there
is a way to do this or did I just install it wrong at the beginning.


Not exactly clear what you're trying to accomplish.
If you want to PERMANENTLY remove the drive, you've been given some hints.
May be as simple as running the repair console and running fixboot or
fixmbr.


When the system powers up, the BIOS assigns a drive mapping.
When you install an OS, the install looks at this mapping and works
from there. The second tries to ADD to the existing mapping.

IF you remove a drive from the middle, the BIOS gives the OS
a different set pointers. The OS may or may not start to boot,
but when it get to the point that it wants to use its own
mapping tables, the linkage breaks and pointers point to the wrong
places.

If you have multiple partitions per drive, it gets worse.
If you have a mixture of SATA and PATA drives, it gets even worse.
MY system boots from the SATA if it exists, no matter what I tell
the BIOS.

There's a program called "smart boot manager" that lets you assign
drive letters to physical partitions. I used to have three partitions,
C,D,E. I loaded one OS on C, remapped E to C and loaded the second OS.
I could boot from C or E, with both thinking they were C with the common
shared drive D. I could even clone C to E and be able to boot it
remapped as C,
with all the drive letters working out correctly.
Problem was that it couldn't handle XP at the time. Not sure whether it
ever got updated or whether there are other programs that can do that with
XP, WIN7. I'd be interested to hear if there are.

I ended up ditching the whole multiboot idea. I use plugin hard drives
for the boot/programs and have a USB drive for common and bulk storage.
That also solves problems that happen when you try to have the same
M$ program on both partitions and can't make them both activate.

mike wrote
jschultznorth wrote

Hi all. My computer originally came with one 500gb hd(drive C) with
the 39 mb dell utlities drive. (dell inspiron) and xp pro32 bit. I
added a 2nd 500 gb hd and put windows 7 on it. So now I have dual
boot. What I want to do and cannot seem to is get rid of the first
drive. When I pull it out and set it to boot from the second it
wont. Is that because the first drive has the boot information or
something. What I want is to just have the second drive and just
windows 7. Just wondering if there is a way to do this or did I just
install it wrong at the beginning.

Not exactly clear what you're trying to accomplish.
If you want to PERMANENTLY remove the drive, you've been given some
hints. May be as simple as running the repair console and running
fixboot or fixmbr.

When the system powers up, the BIOS assigns a drive mapping.
When you install an OS, the install looks at this mapping and works
from there. The second tries to ADD to the existing mapping.

Its much more complicated than that last with modern OSs.

IF you remove a drive from the middle, the BIOS gives the OS
a different set pointers. The OS may or may not start to boot,
but when it get to the point that it wants to use its own mapping tables, the linkage breaks and pointers point to the
wrong places.

And that in spades.

If you have multiple partitions per drive, it gets worse.
If you have a mixture of SATA and PATA drives, it gets even worse.
MY system boots from the SATA if it exists, no matter what I tell
the BIOS.

There's a program called "smart boot manager" that lets you assign
drive letters to physical partitions. I used to have three
partitions, C,D,E. I loaded one OS on C, remapped E to C and loaded
the second OS. I could boot from C or E, with both thinking they were C with the
common shared drive D. I could even clone C to E and be able to boot
it remapped as C,
with all the drive letters working out correctly.
Problem was that it couldn't handle XP at the time. Not sure whether
it ever got updated or whether there are other programs that can do
that with XP, WIN7. I'd be interested to hear if there are.

I ended up ditching the whole multiboot idea. I use plugin hard
drives for the boot/programs and have a USB drive for common and bulk
storage. That also solves problems that happen when you try to have
the same M$ program on both partitions and can't make them both activate.

Much cruder than a decent boot manager.

jschultznorth wrote:

My computer originally came with one 500gb hd(drive C) with
the 39 mb dell utlities drive. (dell inspiron) and xp pro32 bit. I
added a 2nd 500 gb hd and put windows 7 on it. So now I have dual
boot. What I want to do and cannot seem to is get rid of the first
drive. When I pull it out and set it to boot from the second it wont.
Is that because the first drive has the boot information or something.

Yes.

What I want is to just have the second drive and just windows 7.

Just do a repair install with just that drive in the system.

Its stupidly called an upgrade install in the install menus when you boot the distribution CD.

Just wondering if there is a way to do this

Yes.

or did I just install it wrong at the beginning.

Yes, if you had installed it on the second drive with the first drive
unplugged, it would have been fine, but you wouldnt have got a
dual boot config, you would have had to specify which drive to
boot off in the bios to swap between the two OSs.