Dual Boot Problem

[murkywaters]

I usually find answers to questions I have on-line. I'm never the first one with a problem. But in this case, I'm not even sure how to ask. So... Bare with me.

I have two hdd's installed. a while back, I installed Vista on one of the drives. Recently I installed Windows 7 on the other drive and had it dual booting. Every time I'd restart my computer, it would ask me which OS I'd like to start up. I wanted this gone. So I went into MSconfig and deleted the vista choice. Now it doesn't ask anymore... which is good.

But here's the problem.

I wanted to remove the drive that had vista on it and just use the one with Win 7, but it won't start up. The only way Win 7 will start up is when both drives are connected. I'm guessing the older vista drive has some kinda of boot thing going on.

Finally, here's the question:

How do I change it so that the Win 7 HDD has whatever it needs to boot up without the other drive.

I should also point out that when managing the HDD's within Win 7 it shows the vista drive as Healthy(system, active, primary partition) and the Win 7 drive as Healthy(boot, page file, active, crashdump, primary partition)
I'm guessing I need the win 7 drive to say System as well. How do I do that?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[foscooter]

Chances are the some of the Windows 7 boot files are on the Win XP drive, enableing dual boot. There is no way I can tell you which ones.

Once you set up dual boot, you can not just remove one drive, and think you'll have single boot again. Even with the "tweaks" you did.

My only solution is (argh!) reinstall Windows 7 on the drive, without the other one plugged into the motherboard/drive.

Boot Recovery probably won't work, but you can try. It's part of Windows 7 install disk.

Else, this utility may help, but be careful! BTW: It does work with 7. I used it. Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies

 

[murkywaters]

Well, I actually installed win 7 on the other drive (the one with Vista), and after I restarted it was working. So I deleted the newly installed win 7 and now all is fine ...and without having to reinstall over my real win 7 with all the stuff I have on it now.

Thanks for your thoughts!