Remove Windows 7 Beta

March 15, 2009 5:44 AM

How can I uninstall/remove the Windows 7 Beta (dual boot on secondary partition) without formatting the partition?

I installed the Windows 7 Beta on my D drive (really a partition of my primary drive).

Being a Beta, I naively assumed there would be some kind of uninstall option, but I can't find one and Google isn't giving me much hope.

There are hundreds of GB of audio sample data on my D drive which would be a huge hassle to back up (I don't have enough external storage and can't afford to buy a new drive at the moment despite reasonably low prices). Reinstalling it all from the DVDs would take days.

Is there any way to cleanly remove the Windows 7 Beta from my D drive while leaving the rest of the data intact?

If not, is there a *not-so-clean* way to do it which won't be completely disruptive to my system (for example: removing it from the boot list in MSConfig and then simply deleting the Windows/Program Files/etc. folders from the D drive) (If the latter option, will I run into file access issues?)

In case it makes a difference, my primary OS (on C:) is Vista 64.

posted by Alabaster to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I haven't done this in a while, but yeah, it should be fairly easy. Remove the operating system from the boot.ini list, and then delete all the directories on the D: drive that comprise the OS. (I don't know Windows 7, but with XP, it would be Documents and Settings, Program Files, and Windows.

In fact, this is probably the cleanest way to get it done. You probably won't find a tool to do it, and the time you spend trying to find it is time you could have spent doing it manually.

One way to prevent file access issues would be to start Windows 7 one last time, select the entire drive, and change the properties of the files enmasse to be not read only or system or hidden. Then change the security settings to make sure nothing has non-standard ownerships or access settings.

Then boot your Vista, and delete everything. If there are any file issues, it should let you change the permissions. If *that* fails, you might have to boot into a safe mode or recovery console or live CD and manually delete the problem files.

(or, maybe there's a restore point on the D: drive from before you installed the OS? Seems riskier, but might work.)
posted by gjc at 8:10 AM on March 15

I would question somewhat the need to uninstall it at all. Do you really need the few gigs the OS install uses out of a hundreds+ gig drive? If not I'd probably just remove it from the boot list and wait to rearrange things until you're able to do a proper backup.

If you really do need the space, the methods described above sound OK.
posted by dixie flatline at 8:27 AM on March 15

There's no real "uninstall" of Windows7. Fortunately there are only a few folders you have to delete using the process that gjc described. Warning! I had Windows7, installed Windows XP on a separate physical hard drive, and after a few dual boots my boot.ini mysteriously failed to function. I didn't spend too much time figuring it out, only that Windows7 was trying to do something with my 'C:' (Windows XP) when itself resided on the 'D:' partition. I ended up wiping the XP partition, loading Windows7 on it an deleting the 'D:' Windows7 partition manually as gjc described. This was with build 7022.
posted by geoff. at 8:28 AM on March 15

There is no boot.ini in Vista/7. Boot into Vista - if possible - and fire up this program: EasyBCD http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

Read the documentation to restore vista boot loader or something or change the prioity so vista boots first. Just make sure you can boot into Vista. And make sure you got your vista disc on stand by if something goes wrong, because you can boot from the disc to fix boot problems.

Then format 7's drive.

Not a bad idea to backup before hand though.
posted by glenno86 at 8:44 AM on March 15

There are hundreds of GB of audio sample data on my D drive which would be a huge hassle to back up (I don't have enough external storage and can't afford to buy a new drive at the moment despite reasonably low prices). Reinstalling it all from the DVDs would take days.

delete all the directories on the D: drive that comprise the OS. (I don't know Windows 7, but with XP, it would be Documents and Settings, Program Files, and Windows.

If you have data on the drive you'd like to keep, it's most likely in the "Documents and Settings" folder, so DON'T delete that one.
posted by philomathoholic at 10:26 AM on March 15

There's a guide to doing this here which I've bookmarked for when I decide to remove the Windows 7 Beta (meaning I haven't actually tried it myself, so YMMV).
posted by chorltonmeateater at 10:53 AM on March 15