Uninstall or Remove Windows 8 from Dual Boot System having Win 7 & Win XP

All we know that recently Microsoft announced  their upcoming  version of windows ‘Windows 8′ .It’s a totally redesigned OS from Microsoft, having lots of improvements w.r.t performance as well as UI. Metro UI making it more attractive.We already discussed about key features of windows 8 in our earlier post.Many peoples using windows 8 developer preview or consumer preview.Both are development release from Microsoft  for checking further compatibility.

Our recent windows 8 post help many people to dual boot their systems with win 7 & win xp.We know that its not a stable release from Microsoft, that’s why many users facing  incompatibility issue , so they prefer to uninstall Window 8 from their dual boot .We also got lots of comments regarding ‘Win 8 CP removing process’. After doing some sort of research finally we found out the Safe-Remove process of windows 8,which will keep all your previous os. Before I discuss  entire  process, you must consider  following points without fail.

• You can uninstall windows 8 CP/DP  only if you have dual boot enable. i,e you must have Win 7 boot loader  as default.Your windows 8 is must  installed on separate partition.If you upgraded your win 7 to win 8 directly  then downgrade to win 7 is not possible. Don’t proceed if u have windows 8 default boot loader otherwise you will loose all your OS & of course you data

• To configure Win 8  dual boot with win7 boot loader kindly refer trailing  section of our earlier post “Windows 8 Dual boot“, its highly recommended to do this !!! by following proper steps  your boot loader look like this
  

  Boot loader for Windows 8

After full filling  all above points.restart your system & Boot it into windows 8 environment by login with  administrator privileged. Now execute following steps:

#Removing Windows 8 from Boot Loader:

1. Navigate to Drive:WindowsSystem32 and open cmd.exe file in administrator privileged(Simply Right-click on cmd.ex & say “Run as administrator“)

2. You will see command prompt,in that execute this command

bcdedit /enum /v

3. After executing this command you will get list of os which are present in current boot loader.Refer following image

4. Identify the Windows 8 boot-loader by looking at description field and take a note of identifier string in win 8 section (Arrow in above image),Don’t copy it otherwise some malfunctioning will happen,type it manually !!!

5. Now execute this command

bcdedit /delete

Example:bcdedit /delete {1e901d4b-d56e-11de-b7c1-e1ae3e88597f}

6.After successful execution of above command,you will remove win 8 from boot menu ,now your boot loader look like  this  :)

Removing Win8 from boot menu

# Removing partition

1. In above process we just break the link of win8 & boot loader,now we have to remove the partition.To do this reboot your PC & boot it into win 7/win xp

2. Now you will see win 8 drive, simply format it by Right-clicking-> format

3. This will remove all folders and files associated with win 8 and now you can utilize that drive for storage purpose

4. Enjoy your old version of Windows till  windows 8  stable  release