How to remove SYS boot files from hard drive without formating.

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Hi there:

I recently moved a 500GB drive from one computer that had WIn7 installed into my WinXP computer.

Before I moved the drive, I connected it via USB (and adapter,) and deleted all the Win7 files, but there is a lot of data I want to keep.

When I went to restart my computer, it complained about not having some NTFS support files.

I came to realize, my computer was trying to boot from the new drive. I fixed the issue in the BIOS (boot order,) but would like to actually remove the boot files on the new drive to prevent any possibility of an error occurring in the future.

It is not a dual boot issue, that is no menu pop’s up asking from which OS to boot.

In the old days, one would format with the /s option to put boot files on the drive, I don’t know how Win7 does that, I expect something similar. I’d rather not format the drive if I can avoid it.

How do I remove that from my drive? I seem to remember something about the MBR needing to be altered, but this is NTFS, Is it the same?

Thanks, Mark.

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After un-hiding all files and folders, you should be able to find a folder named “boot” and delete it.
It’s located under where you would normally look in C:.
You should also locate & delete the normally hidden system “bootmgr” file.

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Thanks for the response CLiNT,

Are you talking about WinXP which is what I am using?

I went into ‘folder options’ then the ‘view’ tab and clicked every “show” option and unclicked every “hide” option and can’t find any boot folder.

Also, I see no file(s) by the name ‘bootmgr’

Mark.

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No, not the WXP machine, I mean the Windows 7 drive you moved to the XP computer that you still have useless
W7 system files on.

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The boot files are probably on a 100MB “system reserved” partition. If you delete that partition all should be well. To see the partitions you need to run Disk Management.
Start > Run > diskmgmt.msc

cheers, Paul

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