Member Avatar for comcollecme

I bought a used laptop and the former owner partitioned the hardrive (no big deal) but added a second operating system on the other partition. I have windows 7 on the primary partiton but don't know how to uninstall an operating system and don't know if there is a risk of losing the files on the second partition. Is there a way for me to undo the partition itself? I probly won't anyway but I heard laptops don't function as well with partitions and might change my mind. Would I have to back-up my files externally if I did?

-Thnx

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by skilly
Member Avatar for |-|x

The laptop should function fine with a partitioned drive so long as there is sufficient space on the primary partition for the OS to function (create virtual memory and temporary files, expand the registry hives etc)

The best way to get rid of the superfluous operating system would be to format the second partition. This WILL DESTROY any data on that second partition, but will not affect any data on the primary partition. I would suggest copying anything you need from the second partition either onto the primary partition or an external drive and then formatting that partition. If you are not intending to use the additional operating system you could gain yourself a fair amount of disk space and potentially performance by removing it.

If you are unsure about how to format the partition, please ask as I would hate for you to accidentally format the whole drive and lose important data.

Member Avatar for eltonpiko

you need to identifiy which partition has vista on it an right click on the drive in windows explorer and format it.you wont be able to format the win7 drive if your loged into window7.if after that you get any error starting up which i doubt just pop in your win7 dvd at start up an repair start up.

Member Avatar for JorgeM

You may also want to clean up the boot process. While logged onto Windows 7, in the start menu, right click Computer, properties, advanced system settings, advanced tab, then click on settings in the Startup and Recovery section. In the Startup and Recovery section, you have some options there to control which is the default OS and whether or not to show a list of other operating systems.

You can also do this via command line: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff545516(v=vs.85).aspx

Member Avatar for skilly

going to run into trouble if the vista partition is the system partiton...

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