Cleanly remove Vista before Win7

Posting the screenshot for you.

No, I haven't reset the Vista boot sector at this point.

I am running Windows 7 64 bit.

No, I don't have a disk imaging utility such as TI. That is not part of DD. Are there any free ones or good low cost ones? I do have the Norton 360 3 Beta on the Win7 install but I don't believe it will do that with it's backup module.

If your Win 7 worked that easily, I might tend to agree that there must be something wacko with that partition although it would have been more positive if yours was 64bit too. I really hate starting over with the win 7 but you may be right that something is messed up. If I did capture it on an image, what are the odds that the error may carry forward on a restore of the image?

I am starting to wonder if I might not want to focus some energy on seeing if I can create an after install setup of dual boot using Windows Boot Manager instead. Thoughts on difficulty and dangers there?

 

The screenshot needs to be of Absolute Sector 0. You need to make sure you're selecting the Disk and not a partition.

I have Windows 7 64-bit installed on my test computer too. I'll see if it has any problems and post back.

The main disadvantage of using Microsoft's boot manager is the inability to hide partitions and have isolated installations. If that doesn't matter, it may be the easier way to go at this point.

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I just tried OSS with Windows 7 64-bit and it worked fine. I will note that all of my Windows installations used in this test were installed in isolation and were all clean installations.

 

Let me shoot you another file and then I'll go pull up the boot sector image again this time off the drive.

I ran fixboot on Win7 and it did say it cleaned up Windows Vista entries. Glimmer of hope maybe. When I did it I believe XP may have been visible to it, but I thought that in light of everything the worst I would get would be a dual boot after OSS. Did not get that.

After doing this I tried a couple of manual adds of Win7 and it kept overwriting at boot OSS. I know that I forgot one ID on the first one and may also have screwed something up in the second one too. I'll give it to you this time while I go after another image.

 

Well, I felt bad that I hadn't followed your instructions to a 't' so I redid the fixboot with XP hidden. I will send the bootwiz again in case that caused any change, which I doubt.

Here is the bootsector image and I've never seen one of these before but the unknown entry on that partition sure looks suspicious to me. I know nothing as Shultz said.

Looks like the uploader thinks the bootwiz is identical to previous and is preventing a dup upload. Let me know if you want me to try and get past it.

 

Sorry, realized both those were dups so went back and figured out how to get the whole drive.

This is hopefully the true boot sector.

 

Gary,

I'm not seeing anything odd with the partition table.

Assuming the BOOTWIZ.OSS file in post #53 is still the current one, can you try the following:

1. Boot into XP.
2. Replace the currrent file with the attached file.
3. Don't reboot.
4. Run OSS in XP.
5. Note if the Windows 7 entry shows up correctly or not. Check the icon. Check the partition settings (Windows 7 partition Active and "booting flag graphic").
6. Exit the OSS program.
7. Open the BOOTWIZ.OSS file and check the Windows 7 entry. Is the os_type="ntvista" entry still there or did it get set to os_type=""?

If the os_type has been cleared, try this:

1. Edit the BOOTWIZ.OSS file and set it to os_type="unknown".
2. Run OSS in XP again and note any changes to the Windows 7 entry.
3. Exit OSS.
4. Open the BOOTWIZ.OSS file and check the Windows 7 entry. Is the os_type still set to unknown or did it get cleared again?

If it's cleared again, try setting it to ntxp and see what happens.

If any of the above settings don't get cleared by running OSS in Windows, reboot to the OSS menu and boot back into XP and examine the BOOTWIZ.OSS file. I'm trying to find out if both the booted OSS and OSS in Windows are having a problem with the settings or if it's just the booting OSS.

Also, can you check this: If you boot into OSS with os_type set to a value (ntvista, for example), go to the Tools menu and start DD. Browse to the BOOTWIZ folder on the XP partition and Explore it. Find the BOOTWIZ.OSS file, right-click and select Edit. Scroll through the file and see if the os_type value has been changed already or if it's still set. I think there's a Cancel or Close button on the Edit Window, if so, use that instead of OK or Save (we don't want any changes made to the file).

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Another test to run: If you set the Windows 7 entry to os_type="ntvista" and then run OSS in Windows and select to boot into Windows 7 and let the reboot proceed, does Windows 7 boot or do you get an error?

Another test to run: If you set the Windows 7 entry to os_type="ntvista" and then set the BOOTWIZ.OSS file as READ-ONLY and then reboot into OSS, can you boot into Windows 7?

 

There was no change to the os_type in Windows but it was set to null on the boot OSS run so we do have different behaviour.

I'll do some more reboots with the other OS types now.

 

I may jump ahead to this test. I got a successful reboot from Windows at one point and then it bombed when I got to the boot OSS. I am going to do the read-only flag with the ntvista now.

 

ntxp !!!

os_type="ntxp" for Windows 7 Beta 64 bit. That did it!!! So $%^#&# simple. Changed it in Windows and booted straight away with no problem. Tried it from boot OSS and it was perfect.

A couple things for the knowledge base:

OSS would reset the flag and rewrite a read-only file as needed. Couldn't keep it protected from either version.

There is still no Vista icon in boot OSS. I haven't tried changing it yet, but when we were set to ntvista trying to change the icon for the entry without one would crash OSS. I may have neglected to mention that earlier.

One other thing, MudCrab. When I went to go to Tools in boot OSS to activate DD, it was grayed out and not available. Why might that be?

I'll keep active here for a bit in case we want to nail down anything else for the KB. Thanks so much for hanging in there through all of this.

Gary

 

Interesting.

I'm not sure about why DD would be grayed out except that it's not available unless you installed OSS from Windows. If you installed OSS from the CD, then you don't have the option.

In XP, use DD's Disk Editor on the Windows 7 partition (right-click on the partition, Advanced >> Edit). Select to View as Hex from the View menu. Resize the screen to show the complete first sector. Can you post a screenshot? I'm curious what is in the boot sector.

 

I think in one of our trouble-shooting steps I uninstalled OSS and re-installed it from the Boot CD. Once things settle down maybe I can do a reinstall out of Windows again.

Here is the Hex dump. I see there is also an option for a file dump if that would be helpful.