Uh oh, potential boot issues ahead, um help.

[CarlBar]

Ok just finished copying my old and now disabled with msconfig vista drive of my dual boot setup toone of my new disks and went into diskmanager to delete the partition then merge it in with my Win 8.1 partition. Couldn't do it at first but got a warning about active partition. So i swapped the active partition to my win 8.1 partition. Still no dice. So i went digging via google and quickly figured out to my horror that the people who setup the dual boot for me made the vista drive the one with the MBR and that not having that as an active partition would be very very bad. I've now swapped the active partition back to that partition but i'm left with two questions.

 

1. Will swapping the active partition off and on again like that have done anything to my MBR, will the system continue to boot normally, (i've created a recovery USB but i've never tested this systems ability to boot off a USB or the USB for that matter, and i don't have access to a test case alas).

 

2. Once i'm sure my system can continue to run fine i need a tutorial on how to migrate the MBR over, Goggles produces answers that are confusing me a bit, probably because at least some seem to be about what to do if you've messed up your MBR or other questions instead.

[TetraSky]

20 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

1. Will swapping the active partition off and on again like that have done anything to my MBR, will the system continue to boot normally, (i've created a recovery USB but i've never tested this systems ability to boot off a USB or the USB for that matter, and i don't have access to a test case alas).

 

2. Once i'm sure my system can continue to run fine i need a tutorial on how to migrate the MBR over, Goggles produces answers that are confusing me a bit, probably because at least some seem to be about what to do if you've messed up your MBR or other questions instead.

 

1- If nothing was written, all you've done is basically flipping a 1 for a 0, wouldn't affect anything.

2- If you want to repair the MBR(vista), just use the Installation disc/USB, boot to it and select "Repair your Computer", open the command prompt, type the following and press enter after each line.

bootrec /FixMbr
bootrec /FixBoot
bootrec /RebuildBcd

(or try Startup Repair, see if it works)

[CarlBar]

It's the vista i want to get rid of and the win 8.1 i want to keep, (i'm typing this from the 8.1 install atm), but it seems the MBR for both OS's when the dual boot was setup was done onto the vista Partition.

 

Also [hew on the shouldn;t affect anything.

[TetraSky]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

It's the vista i want to get rid of and the win 8.1 i want to keep, (i'm typing this from the 8.1 install atm), but it seems the MBR for both OS's when the dual boot was setup was done onto the vista Partition.

 

Also [hew on the shouldn;t affect anything.

Well, just delete Vista, and repair boot/startup with the Win8.1 install media if it no longer boots.

[CarlBar]

Ummm i feel like your completely missing what i'm saying so let me try an image:

 

 

Circled in red is my D partition, this is where Windows Vista was installed and from what i can make out the MBR for the dual boot. Win 8.1 thus will not allow me to delete this whilever the MBR is there. This is also the one i want to delete.

 

Circled in green is my Win 8.1 Partition. This is what i'm currently using and want to keep.

 

 

My problem is that i need to move the MBR from the D to the C partition before win 8.1 will let me delete the D partition.

[CarlBar]

Apologies for bumping this but i kinda really need an answer.

 

I did find this, (see spoiler) online for someone with nearly the exact same issue, (they also had the system partition on a seperate drive rather than a seperate partition of the same drive), but it was for win 7 not 8,.1 so no idea if it would work and i don't wanna do anything till i have a should work solution.

 

Spoiler

Just open an elevated command prompt and type:
bcdboot c:\windows/s

assuming that is successful, then type:

diskpart

sel vol c

act

sel vol z

inact

exi

close cmd prompt. 

Done.

 

[CarlBar]

Update, even though i've kinda given up on getting an answer and am starting to think a full reinstall with reformat of the disk might be needed :(. But the above spoilered solution didn't work and almost bricked my system, had to use DISKART from command prompt of recovery disk to get it back as auto repair couldn't fix it.. Yuck.