multiple windows installs on hard drive?

Question

Well Microsoft screwed me over with their ever so clever "O boy this is ingenious having the computer on shutdown to install updates so as not to interrupt consumer," idea. I shut down my computer and turned it on later after updates had been applied. I was taken to Starup repair where it told me a corrupt update had been installed (how does that even happen). I tried everything after startup repair failed me along with my windows backup and recovery. Finally decided to reinstall windows. Installed and rebooted, got to the windows logo + "Starting Windows" and it says something like the installation has failed try reinstalling. I did what it said and again it said the same thing. My whole hard drive is corrupted from windows doing anything with it. Soooo i installed it on my second hard drive. Works perfectly now (except for the part where i had to reinstall all drivers i did not have discs for) and now that i have it running again i have copied all files i needed from the other windows install folders from my 1st hard drive. How can i get rid of all 3 of these corrupted installs? They are taking up a bunch of space and i need them gone (i thought 3TB would be enough but i guessed wrong), can i just delete the folders or do i have to do it another way?

Answer 1

Format the drive that has the failed installations.



They should still be connected to the motherboard, yes? If so, open them up in Windows Explorer, right-click, and format.



Presto. Problem solved. You now have an empty disk waiting for you to put stuff in it.

Answer 2

Don't feel like you are the only one, pal...windows update is being viewed as more evil than benefit by many like-minded consumers who have had similar experiences...Did you notice that your custom or prior restore points were wiped when update ran also? (One of my biggest bones to pick after spending much time and effort to "cherry out" my computer and opsystem to perfect capability and reliability, and making a forced, customized restore point in case something bad happened.....) is my eyelid twitching again? the little vein in my forehead throbbing under my pallid , ghastly paled complexion?...Your best bet is to back up all the drivers you need onto a disc so you will have them the next time, then completely wipe out the existing partitions and re-partitioning them, then re-formatting so that you will have more free space...Your admin account won't have the system level, err..." trusted installer" priviledges required to fully delete them, and you will end up with an even more useless trio of opsystems which can potentially corrupt your one good one. Just be sure to leave the partition with your paging file on it alone if you do this, or else windows may fail to start also!. (Don't ask how I know that one.)...good luck.

Answer 3

Formatting the disk may or may not return all of your disk space. The failed installs may be in hidden or separate partitions. Instead, use fdisk to work with the partitions on the suspect disk. This has the additional advantage of locking out any bad sectors that the disk may contain.



After you fdisk the disk, you format it as a regular disk. You're good to go after that.



The MS Support link below contains detailed instructions as well as things you'll need to check as you proceed.



Good luck

Answer 4

domicile windows 7 will purely format what you tell it to format in the course of the set up. in the journey that your 2 drives are walls on a unmarried actual disk, you'll go with to be particular you do not replace the walls in the course of the domicile windows 7 set up. in the journey that they are actual separate disks, it gained't even contact the 2d disk.