Correct way to "undo" Windows 7/8 dual boot?

[Channeledbymodem]

I'm liking Windows 8.1 enough to eventually make it my "daily driver."

I would want to replace my active Windows 7 install on my only SSD with the current Windows 8.1 on a hard drive partition.

I want to avoid cloning the 8.1 partition to the SSD, only to find I can't boot from the SSD. Once I find I can boot 8.1 from the SSD I would want to delete the 8.1 partition on the hard drive.

More BCD magic?

Thanks,
Ron

 

[Elixer]

It depends on how you set everything up with your dual boot.
You could just clone it over to the SSD (make sure it is aligned!) and then stick in windows to "repair" the boot loader, or use a 3rd party program to do it.

In either case, you should also do a backup of your SSD, in case something really goes wrong, and you can't boot.

 

[ViRGE]

It depends on how you set everything up with your dual boot.
You could just clone it over to the SSD (make sure it is aligned!) and then stick in windows to "repair" the boot loader, or use a 3rd party program to do it.

That's the best suggestion I can come up with too.

Assuming your Windows 8.1 drive is fully independent (that is, you can boot off of that drive without the SSD present), then copying over its contents should be fine.

Otherwise if you're doing a dual boot system with a single boot loader (the Win8.1 HDD does not have its own bootloader), then you need to delete the Windows 7 OS from the SSD, and then copy over the Windows 8.1 OS partition in its place, while leaving the bootloader untouched. Even then, you would probably need to rebuild the BCD to make it happy (bootrec /rebuildbcd).