Remove Or Uninstall Windows 7/ Vista With XP Intact On A Dual-boot System
All Windows operating systems support dual-booting feature, wherein you are able to install two operating systems on a single machine and select any of them while booting up. If you have Windows XP running on your system, you may install Windows 7/ Vista as a second operating system to turn your PC into a dual-boot system.
For some reason, if you wish to remove the Windows 7/ Vista partition from your PC and revert back to the single OS, i.e. Windows XP, you may do so by following the below mentioned procedure. This procedure will efficiently remove or uninstall Windows 7/ Vista from your PC leaving the Windows XP OS with all the files and data intact.
Please Note that this tutorial should not be used if your dual boot PC is Windows Vista and Windows 7.
- Boot your PC and logon to the desktop of Windows XP.
- Put the DVD installation disc of Windows 7/ Vista into the DVD-ROM/ CD-ROM of your system.
- As a second option, you may mount the DVD ISO image of Windows 7/ Vista onto any virtual drive.
- Open the Command Prompt or directly go to the Start Menu and select “Run” option to open the run command box.
- Within the run command box or Command Prompt, you need to type the command mentioned below and press the “Enter” key.
[DVD Drive Letter]:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force
- If “D” happens to be your DVD drive, you need to type the following command:
D:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force
- This step will basically remove the OS selection option from the boot menu.
- Next, reboot the system after removing the DVD disc.
- Your PC will now boot up with XP partition.
- All files and folders related to Windows 7/ Vista including Program Files, Windows and user folders need to be removed manually. You may also format the Windows 7/ Vista partition for cleaning it up instantly using Disk Manager, FDisk or any other third-party partition management software like EASEUS Partition Manager or Partition Magic.
- Finally go to the Window XP’s root system folder and delete the files “BootSect.BAK” and “Boot.BAK”. These two files are the backup surplus files of Windows 7/ Vista boot loader, which are no more useful in Windows XP system.
Windows XP and Server 2003 use Master Boot Record (MBR) “NT52” whereas Windows Vista and Windows 7 use “NT60”. So, if you wish to uninstall Windows 7 from a dual-boot system having Windows 7 and Vista installed, you need to simply replace “NT52” in the above mentioned command by “NT60”, i.e. “[DVD Drive Letter]:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 ALL /force”.
A Shortcut to the above mentioned procedure:
You may also format the Windows 7/ Vista partition directly and restart the PC by running the Setup CD of Windows XP in order to fix the system partition. Alternatively, you may run the command “bootsect /nt52 c:” from the folder “\boot\” in the leftover operating system immediately so as to fix the boot partition.
While you try to fix the boot record following the un-installation of an OS from a multi-boot system, you need to use the installation DVD/CD of the higher version of operating system present on the PC for doing the repair.
For instance, if yours is a tri-boot system with Windows XP, Windows 7 and Vista and you uninstall Windows 7, you need to use installation DVD/CD of Windows Vista in order to repair your system. If you have restored your PC to only Windows XP, you need to use the setup CD of Windows XP.