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Dual boot Vista/XP... I need to delete Vista??

Dual boot Vista/XP... I need to delete Vista??

Postby maurice302 » Fri Dec 31, 2010 2:13 am

A friend helped make my PC into a dual boot system with VistaBootPRO, with Vista as the C: drive and XP as the J: drive. I needed to have XP at the time because my main music program wasn't compatible with Vista. I used to switch back and forth, but ultimately stopped using Vista bc it became too buggy.

Now I want to get rid of it. I no longer have contact with the friend who set my PC up and am worried I could mess everything up. I'm in the process of backing everything up, BUT I need to know what steps I need to take to delete the VISTA drive. I want that space since my J: drive is getting pretty full.

Under View Settings: View BCD Registry Settings, this is what it says:
There is currently 2 OS(s) installed on your system.
The current boot timeout is: 30

Default OS: Microsoft Windows Vista

Entry 1
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {default}
Boot Drive: C:
Windows Drive: C:
System Bootloader: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

Entry 2
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name: Microsoft Windows XP Home
BCD ID: {ntldr}
Boot Drive: J:
System Bootloader: \ntldr

Under Manage OS entries, I see that I can select the OS and click the red X. I'm just unsure of what else I need to do, or if I can even do this.

Can someone please help? Thank you!
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Re: Dual boot Vista/XP... I need to delete Vista??

Postby Grav!ty » Fri Dec 31, 2010 2:17 am

When you are booted to XP, what is your drive configuration? Is XP then your C: drive?

If you post a screenshot of your Disk Management from XP and the text of your boot.ini, we should be able to get this done quite easily without risking being able to boot to nothing.
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Re: Dual boot Vista/XP... I need to delete Vista??

Postby maurice302 » Fri Dec 31, 2010 2:37 am

Image

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
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Re: Dual boot Vista/XP... I need to delete Vista??

Postby Grav!ty » Fri Dec 31, 2010 3:04 am

Do you have a Windows XP installation CD disc?

Removing Vista from your system is not going to be as straight forward as I hoped as the system obviously came with Vista preinstalled and Vista is on the drive tagged (System) as per your disk management. This means that your XP boot system files are stored there...these are ntldr, boot.ini and NTDETECT.COM and changing the 1st boot HDD to the XP one in the BIOS will probably make your XP drive unbootable.

If that is the case then, we are going to need your XP CD to rebuild your boot configuration.
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Re: Dual boot Vista/XP... I need to delete Vista??

Postby maurice302 » Fri Dec 31, 2010 3:26 am

So here's my plan now...

Since I can't find my XP CD, I'm going to back up all my files onto an external. Wipe everything clean, start from scratch with Windows 7.

LOL
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Re: Dual boot Vista/XP... I need to delete Vista??

Postby Grav!ty » Fri Dec 31, 2010 3:32 am

I'd suggest you create recovery discs from the recovery partition before wiping everying clean - check your computers documentation to do that :yesnod:
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