I recently put windows 7 on my PC. The first time I installed the 32 bit version, when I wanted to run the 64 bit version. It wasn’t a huge problem, I just put the install disk back in and installed the 64 bit over the 32 bit. The only problem with this was that there were two Windows 7 entries in the bootloader.

This weekend I decided that I needed some more space on the Windows 7 partition, which should have been simple, but since the Windows 7 partition was at the back of the hard drive I couldn’t add to it. So after I shrunk the Windows XP partition I tried to reinstall Windows 7 in the empty space, the only problem was that it didn’t get added to the bootloader, so I had to go into “diskpart” and make the second partition active if I wanted to boot Windows 7 and then go back and make the first partition active if I wanted to boot Windows XP. In addition, both of the Windows 7 entries were still listed in the XP bootloader, but neither of them would boot anything.

I decided that would just wipe Windows 7 and reset the Windows XP bootloader, and hopefully after reinstalling Windows 7 everything will be well again. Here’s how to remove the Windows 7 bootloader. (Will also work for Vista).

How To: Remove Windows 7 Bootloader

  1. Recover Console
  2. Fixboot
  3. Fixmbr

That’s all. Of course you should remember to backup everything just in case, but this worked for me.

Thanks to tech-recipes.com for pointing me in the right direction.