changing from dual boot to single boot of win7 - help please

[anykey]

Hello, I have been using a dual boot setup of XP on a new fast drive and win7 on an old slow drive.
I am now ready to cease using XP and I want to do a clean install win7 on the new drive and remove the old drive.
My data is quite separate on a third drive.
I have been using Easy BCD to manage my boot.

I have today installed win7 on the new drive.
I ran setup.exe from within the existing win7.
The reason for that is my installation CD would not run from bootup, but insisted on booting into the easybcd boot manager screen.

Win7 is happily working on the new drive. Hooray
I now want to remove the old drive but I cannot. Boo 

Somehow the boot manager insists on having the old drive present coz it wants to use it to boot.
Even though it eventually takes me to my new win7 installation. I hope I am explaining this clearly. 

I suppose I have to get boot files from the root of the old drive and replace them on the new drive.
OR, am I to edit some boot file on the new drive to tell it to forget about the old drive and just use files on my new drive.
I am confused.
I wonder if you can help me please.
Thanks,

[DMHolt57]

Look in the bios and see if you can change the boot order from there...

[anykey]

Hello DMHolt57, that's exactly what I am doing.
When my machine boots the boot menu comes up.
If I allow it to boot to the default Old drive then all boots well.
However, if I change the boot to the New drive it bombs out and wants me to Repair the win7 installation, again.

My gut feel is that a tweak is needed to a boot file, or copy file(s) from the Old root directory but I dunno.

[javajolt]

How to modify Windows 7 Boot Loader?

The Windows 7 installer set the  default boot choice to  Windows 7 and renamed the XP as “Previous version of Windows”, also a timeout of 30sec set.

If you try to modify the boot options the oldfashioned with boot.ini file, you get the following warnings:

;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.

If you examine, Windows 7 doesn't have NTFS write permissions on XP system partition, even though it creates a "boot sector" inside it, cause it is the first one in line on the system disk, which is shared half on half by both systems.

So I booted into Windows 7, and run the following commands:

1.By default Vista/Windows 7 open command prompt in user mode, so we need to change the permission. To do so, just execute this command:
Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > (right-click & "Run as administrator") Command prompt

2.bcdedit /set {legacy} Description "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition SP3"
(Changes the text description of the "Legacy" OS line in the boot menu. The quotation marks must be included in the command)

3.bcdedit /default {legacy}
( Sets the legacy (Windows XP) OS as {default} boot item)

4.Running bcdedit /?
(shows all commands one is able to use)

You can also have a look at this, although written for vista, it should work on Win 7

EasyBCD 1.7.2
http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

EasyBCD

[Irtehpasty]

By booting and installing Windows 7 onto the new drive from within the old one, the bootcode is probably on the old drive.  Only thing I can think of doing is boot from the DVD after removing the old drive to reinstall.  Of course, back everything up first.

[anykey]

...my installation CD would not run from bootup, but insisted on booting into the easybcd boot manager screen

Irtehpasty, that's what I did do. I wouldn't work.
Thanks for trying.

[anykey]

javajolt, I am on another avenue of opportunity that looks promising.
Will report back later