Dual Boot Windows 7 and Windows 8 - Delete Windows 8

How to Delete "Windows 8" in your Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Vista​

   Information

This tutorial will show you how to delete Windows 8 in your dual boot with Windows 7 or Vista when Windows 7 or Vista was installed first and Windows 8 installed second. This will leave you with only having Windows 7 or Vista installed afterwards.

Part One

Here's How:


1. Start or restart your PC, and boot into Windows 7 or Vista. (see screenshot below)

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2. In Disk Management, delete the partition that you installed Windows 8 on so that is is now unallocated space. (see screenshots below)

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3. If you like, you could either create a new partition to use with the unallocated space, or extend the Windows 7 or Vista C: drive into the unallocated space to add it back to the C: partition. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: This will vary depending on how you have your hard drive setup though.

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4. When finished, restart your PC and only have Windows 7 or Vista installed and listed in the Windows Boot Manager screen.

Part Two

When you have your Dual boot on a PC with a uEFI setup.






Follow the steps in Part One.

All done.

Related Tutorials

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• How to Delete "Windows 7" in your Dual Boot with Windows 8
• How to Delete an Operating System Listed in Windows Boot Manager
• How to Do a Dual Boot Installation with Windows 8 and Windows 7 or Vista
• How to Create a Windows 8 VHD at Boot to Dual Boot with Windows 7 or Vista
• How to Enable or Disable the New Windows 8 Startup Options Boot Menu
• How to Choose a Default Operating System to Run at Startup in Windows 8
• How to Downgrade Windows 8 to Windows 7

 

[karlsnooks]

Shawn,
Don't recall the details, but when rebooted I got a msg indicating that boot mgr or boot loader missing and upon boot the dual-icon screen showed up where one would chose Win 7 or Win 8. Of course, choosing Win 7 resulted in the error msg.

fortunately, I had a system image backup and a Win 7 System Repair Disc.

 

[Brink]

Karl,

I'll do some more testing on that, but a startup repair with a Windows 7 disc should be able to fix it if that happens again though.

 

[karlsnooks]

Tried. Several times. No success.

 

[Brink]

Karl,

Okey doke. I just finished testing this on a VM with a 60GB partition split into two 30GB partitions. I installed Windows 7 at boot first without having the 100MB "System Reserved" partition included, then installed Windows 8 at boot on the second partition.

When finished, I restarted the computer to boot into Windows 7. Did the tutorial on the first page exactly. When I restarted, Windows 7 started and Window 8 was completely gone. I ran a bcdedit /enum command to verify that Windows 8 was no longer listed.

The tutorial worked perfectly fine for me for the situation you described, so I'm not sure what may have gone wrong when you did it.

 

[theog]

Karl,

Were you using the Windows 8 Reboot bootloader or Windows 7 non-Reboot bootloader?

 

[karlsnooks]

theog,

I was following Brink's procedure.

When the procedure failed, then I tried doing a system repair using a Win 7 System Repair Disc.

 

[aem]

I usually go into the msconfig > boot tab and remove the Windows 8 boot first before deleting the partition and restarting. doing it the other way may corrupt the bootup.

 

[karlsnooks]

How many times have your installed and then uninstalled Win 8.

Perhaps Shawn would be interesting in hearing your approach.

 

[theog]

I usually go into the msconfig > boot tab and remove the Windows 8 boot first before deleting the partition and restarting. doing it the other way may corrupt the bootup.

If you follow Shawn's tutorial
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2344-dual-boot-installation-windows-8-windows-7-vista.html
& make no boot loader changes at all, you will have two independent boot loaders.

 

[theog]

theog,

I was following Brink's procedure.

When the procedure failed, then I tried doing a system repair using a Win 7 System Repair Disc.

How many times have your installed and then uninstalled Win 8.

Perhaps Shawn would be interesting in hearing your approach.

If you follow Shawn's tutorial
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2344-dual-boot-installation-windows-8-windows-7-vista.html
& make no boot loader changes at all, you will have two independent boot loaders.

Did you make any boot loader changes?

About 50 test installs, before making the OP.

 

[aem]

I usually go into the msconfig > boot tab and remove the Windows 8 boot first before deleting the partition and restarting. doing it the other way may corrupt the bootup.

If you follow Shawn's tutorial
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2344-dual-boot-installation-windows-8-windows-7-vista.html
& make no boot loader changes at all, you will have two independent boot loaders.

Nah couldn't be bothered, i'm very lazy you know.

 

[karlsnooks]

Zero changes to bootloader. Thanks for your interest.

 

[Brink]

Karl,

Could you give a break down of how you installed Windows 7 and Windows 8, and how your HDD(s) is setup to see if anything may be different with how you did it that may reveal why it didn't work the same for you?

 

[karlsnooks]

Shawn,
Had Win 7 Ultimate x64 with SP1 installed and fully uptodate.

Installed Win 8 per your tutorial.

Win 7 in a 50 GB partition
Win 8 in a 50 GB partition with a VHD of 40 GB for the Win 8.

 

[Brink]

I'm not sure then. I had a setup like that, and it worked on it as well. :huh:

 

[karlsnooks]

You probably had the 100 mb reserved partition.

I did not and still don't.

 

[mikedl]

You probably had the 100 mb reserved partition.

I did not and still don't.

Neither do I, Karl.

 

[karlsnooks]

Sure hope you made a system image backup of your Win 7 before installing Win 8.

I was lucky and had made one so I didn't lose much when the uninstall of Win 8 did not work "as advertised".

You will notice that Shawn's snapshots always show a 100 mb reserved partition.

 

[Brink]

You probably had the 100 mb reserved partition.

I did not and still don't.

Sure hope you made a system image backup of your Win 7 before installing Win 8.

I was lucky and had made one so I didn't lose much when the uninstall of Win 8 did not work "as advertised".

You will notice that Shawn's snapshots always show a 100 mb reserved partition.

You'll notice in my post here that I had already tested this without a 100 MB "System Reserved" partition, and it works with it. I have also tried the VHD option with and without the 100 MB partition without issue as well.

My main system does have the 100 MB partition. Hence the screenshots. The tutorial works with it as well.

There's nothing wrong if you wanted to delete the Windows 8 boot entry in msconfig after deleting the Windows 8 installation from within Windows 7, then rebooting. We are just saying that, if Windows 7 was installed first and this was done in Windows 7, then normally you wouldn't need to manually delete the Windows 8 boot entry since it is now normally deleted automatically. I'm not sure what may have been different about your installation or setup than ours, but I'm sure that there will still be bugs to be worked out since Windows 8 is still only a developer preview.

 

[karlsnooks]

Shawn,
I wish I knew why my uninstall did not work as advertised as I followed your tutorial to the letter.

At the present, I don't have the time to sacrifice to make another run at it.
When I get the time, then I'll make a sys img backup, install, and try to uninstall again immediately.
thanks,
karl