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[sgk Profile]

Hi,
Here is my setup:
I have got XP in my C drive (primary partition) and vista in my D drive. I want to remove XP and let the space be unpartitioned.(I plan to extend it to my linux partition later on). I really want to do all this without having to reinstall vista. My worry is that since I had installed XP before vista, I might have some booting issues after removing XP. (There are boot.ini, ntldr and other system files in XP)
I have already purchased vista boot pro. I went to the System Bootloader tab and selected the option Windows Vista Bootloader (Uninstall Legacy Bootloader). On the install options, I selected System Partition and didnt check the option "Force Bootloader Install". It seemed to work ok (no error messages). So can I just format my C drive from Vista or is there something else I need to do?

Here is the screenshot of the Disk Management as seen from Vista. (Note that the two unrecognized file systems are my linux partitions):



Thanks for your time and help,
SGK.

[Grav!ty Profile]

You won't be able to delete or format the System partition using any Windows tools like disk manager or diskpart. You can try to copy the boot system files of Vista from the C drive to the root of the D drive (bootmgr and the folder Boot plus contents) and then mark the Vista partition Active and run a startup repair from your Vista DVD, but I don't think that will work.

It's not possible to remove the drive letter from a System partition either to hide it, using the Windows tools. I guess you could try a third party partition manager but I can't recommend one that might. Third party partition managers are notorious for causing a fubar of Vista and Windows 7 booting ability.

[sgk Profile]

Thanks for the quick response!
But I don't understand.. When I selected vista as my bootloader and uninstalled the legacy bootloader (using vista boot pro), doesn't it mean that vista takes care of booting process now? So isin't it safe to say, boot with a vista dvd and format the C drive?

Thanks,
SGK.

[sgk Profile]

So.. nobody has any ideas to offer?

[Grav!ty Profile]

You should find that your Vista boot system files (folder Boot and file bootmgr) are also on that (system) partition. You can try to copy and paste those two items to your Vista partition if you like and then format it and run a startup repair from your Vista DVD. It may work to get you booting to Vista. I really can't think of another solution.