Removing Vista Home Basic on a system that also has Vista Home Pre

[KNARFOH]

I had Windows Vista Home Basic 32bit installed on my C drive.

I wanted to update to Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit.

Because it would be a huge hazzle if the new install to premium did not
work, I decided to install Vista Premium on a second hard drive on my
computer, i.e. J drive.

The Vista Premium is working fine and I have manually copied over the
folders from the C drive to the J drive that I need, i.e. pictures, music,
etc.

All of that has gone fine. Now I want to eliminate the C drive for booting
purposes. Presently, when my computer boots, it asks me which version of
Windows Vista I want to boot to.

I want to eliminate the C drive as an option, but I don't want to erase the
files just yet in case down the line I discover some file or folder I did not
manually move.

I unplugged the C drive and and my computer will not find Vista Home Premium
on the J drive.

Someone told me that is because the boot manager is on the C drive where I
have Vista Home Basic Installed and without it, I will not be able to boot
Vista Home Premium on my J drive.

How do I eliminate C drive Vista Home Basic but still be able to boot to J
drive Vista Home Preimium? I dont want to reformat the c drive or entirely
erase all files.

I set the j drive as the first boot option in the motherboard option but I
get a message that the OS cant be found.

Can anyone help me or point me to a document in the knowledge base that will
help me?

 

[Earle Horton]

This is considered advanced computer user stuff. That said, what you need
to do is to copy the boot files from the Vista install DVD to the new boot
drive. If you remove the C: drive, place it in a safe place, and boot the
Vista install DVD, it should then give you the option to "repair" the Vista
installation on the J: drive. It needs to be repaired because it is missing
the boot manager, as you said. After you are done, the J: drive will
probably appear to Vista as the C: drive, which is what you normally would
want.

Feel free to post again if this is not 100% clear.

Good luck,

Earle

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

BCDedit will remove the option, and after a restart, let you delete the C
drive old system files.
Bcdedit:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/windo...3aac-44a0-b7fd-bd9561d615531033.mspx?mfr=true

If you happen to make an error, BootRec would repair it.
How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to
troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/en-us

If you like easy, this utility has a good rep.
VistaBootPRO - Go PRO with Microsoft Windows Vista Boot Manager:
http://www.vistabootpro.org/
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Mark L. Ferguson
..

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

With C: removed and J: set as the first boot option, start the system with
the Vista disk in the drive and boot from it. Run the startup repair
function. This should write the necessary files to the J: drive.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Knarfoh]

I have MSI K9A2 Platinum Motherboard which has 1 IDE connector (to which I
have 2 DVD burners attached) and 6 SATA connectors (to which I have 4 hard
drives and 2 more DVD burners attached).

I can boot to the Vista install disk (as everyone has suggested) but it does
not find ANY of the versions of Vista I have installed on my computer. This
is a relatively new MB so I assume it does not recognize the needed drivers
automatically. It does give me the option of loading drivers and I try, but
I guess I do not know what I am doing because I cannot get my setup to
recognize the SATA hard drives so I can select the VISTA setup on my J drive
and repair the installation.

It appears it is loading the drivers, by the way, but then it returns to the
screen which displays the Vista installs on your computer and where it gives
you the option of choosing which install to repair, but the fields remain
blank.

Any other ideas? If not, still thanks for trying to help.

Hi,

With C: removed and J: set as the first boot option, start the system with
the Vista disk in the drive and boot from it. Run the startup repair
function. This should write the necessary files to the J: drive.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Knarfoh]

I have MSI K9A2 Platinum Motherboard which has 1 IDE connector (to which I
have 2 DVD burners attached) and 6 SATA connectors (to which I have 4 hard
drives and 2 more DVD burners attached).

I can boot to the Vista install disk (as everyone has suggested) but it does
not find ANY of the versions of Vista I have installed on my computer. This
is a relatively new MB so I assume it does not recognize the needed drivers
automatically. It does give me the option of loading drivers and I try, but
I guess I do not know what I am doing because I cannot get my setup to
recognize the SATA hard drives so I can select the VISTA setup on my J drive
and repair the installation.

It appears it is loading the drivers, by the way, but then it returns to the
screen which displays the Vista installs on your computer and where it gives
you the option of choosing which install to repair, but the fields remain
blank.

Any other ideas? If not, still thanks for trying to help.

BCDedit will remove the option, and after a restart, let you delete the C
drive old system files.
Bcdedit:
http://technet2.microsoft.com/windo...3aac-44a0-b7fd-bd9561d615531033.mspx?mfr=true

If you happen to make an error, BootRec would repair it.
How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment to
troubleshoot and repair startup issues in Windows Vista:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/en-us

If you like easy, this utility has a good rep.
VistaBootPRO - Go PRO with Microsoft Windows Vista Boot Manager:
http://www.vistabootpro.org/
--
Was this helpful? Then click the Ratings button. Voting helps the web
interface.
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Mark L. Ferguson
.

 

[Knarfoh]

I have MSI K9A2 Platinum Motherboard which has 1 IDE connector (to which I
have 2 DVD burners attached) and 6 SATA connectors (to which I have 4 hard
drives and 2 more DVD burners attached).

I can boot to the Vista install disk (as everyone has suggested) but it does
not find ANY of the versions of Vista I have installed on my computer. This
is a relatively new MB so I assume it does not recognize the needed drivers
automatically. It does give me the option of loading drivers and I try, but
I guess I do not know what I am doing because I cannot get my setup to
recognize the SATA hard drives so I can select the VISTA setup on my J drive
and repair the installation.

It appears it is loading the drivers, by the way, but then it returns to the
screen which displays the Vista installs on your computer and where it gives
you the option of choosing which install to repair, but the fields remain
blank.

Any other ideas? If not, still thanks for trying to help.

This is considered advanced computer user stuff. That said, what you need
to do is to copy the boot files from the Vista install DVD to the new boot
drive. If you remove the C: drive, place it in a safe place, and boot the
Vista install DVD, it should then give you the option to "repair" the Vista
installation on the J: drive. It needs to be repaired because it is missing
the boot manager, as you said. After you are done, the J: drive will
probably appear to Vista as the C: drive, which is what you normally would
want.

Feel free to post again if this is not 100% clear.

Good luck,

Earle

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

Don't despair yet. If you do not a have an old fashioned '3 1/2' floppy
drive' to put the SATA drivers on (setup finds that location during setup),
you can 'burn' a copy of the setup disk with the Sata drivers available on
the of the CD
--
Was this helpful? Then click the Ratings button. Voting helps the web
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Mark L. Ferguson
..

I have MSI K9A2 Platinum Motherboard which has 1 IDE connector (to which I
have 2 DVD burners attached) and 6 SATA connectors (to which I have 4 hard
drives and 2 more DVD burners attached).

I can boot to the Vista install disk (as everyone has suggested) but it
does
not find ANY of the versions of Vista I have installed on my computer.
This
is a relatively new MB so I assume it does not recognize the needed
drivers
automatically. It does give me the option of loading drivers and I try,
but
I guess I do not know what I am doing because I cannot get my setup to
recognize the SATA hard drives so I can select the VISTA setup on my J
drive
and repair the installation.

It appears it is loading the drivers, by the way, but then it returns to
the
screen which displays the Vista installs on your computer and where it
gives
you the option of choosing which install to repair, but the fields remain
blank.

Any other ideas? If not, still thanks for trying to help.

 

[KNARFOH]

Does not find a VISTA setup on any of my drives.. either C or J. I removed
the J like you said, but still doesn't see it.

I assume it is because I have to load some drivers since all my hard drives
are SATA. Not sure where I find the drivers?

I copied the driver from windows\system32\drivers but that didnt work.

Any suggestions? Thanks for any help you give me.

In the meantime, I am using my computer just fine. Just now I want to free
up the original C drive.

--
KnarfOH
Canal Winchester OH

Hi,

With C: removed and J: set as the first boot option, start the system with
the Vista disk in the drive and boot from it. Run the startup repair
function. This should write the necessary files to the J: drive.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[KNARFOH]

Okay..found the drivers that let me find the J drive, but when I click on
REPAIR, it still doesn't recognize that there is a Windows Vista Premium
version installed on that hard drive.

I can browse the computer and find the J drive is there with the Windows
directory, etc. so I can see it, but apparently the repair program cannot?

Any ideas. Sorry about all the messages today. Hope you read them in order
and all of them before you started replying.

I keep trying things to see if I can get this to work. What you told me so
far was very helpful, just still doesnt seem to be solving my problem.

I thoght once I got the driver installed to recognize the SATA hard drive,
it would be a piece of cake but I was WRONG !


--
KnarfOH
Canal Winchester OH

Hi,

With C: removed and J: set as the first boot option, start the system with
the Vista disk in the drive and boot from it. Run the startup repair
function. This should write the necessary files to the J: drive.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[KNARFOH]

Found the drivers so that i recognizes the J drive which is the drive I have
Windows Vista Premium installed.

I disconnected the other hard drive (C) that had Windows Vista Basic
installed on it.

When I attempt to repair, it never finds the J drive with a version of
Windows Vista installed. But when I browse the computer, I can find the J
Drive.

Wonder why it is not recognizing it as an install of Windows Vista and
allowing me to repair it?

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

By disconnecting the other drive, you have probably changed the drive letter
of the install on J:. If you want to save the J: install, you are going to
have to run with a C: drive to startup. C: can be repaired to do the work,
all you need is BootRec, or some other repair utility.

--
Was this helpful? Then click the Ratings button. Voting helps the web
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Mark L. Ferguson
..

Found the drivers so that i recognizes the J drive which is the drive I
have
Windows Vista Premium installed.

I disconnected the other hard drive (C) that had Windows Vista Basic
installed on it.

When I attempt to repair, it never finds the J drive with a version of
Windows Vista installed. But when I browse the computer, I can find the J
Drive.

Wonder why it is not recognizing it as an install of Windows Vista and
allowing me to repair it?