remove XP keeping Vista

  • Thread starter Thread starter Newsgroups
  • Start date Start date
N

Newsgroups

Hi
I had Xp on my system and used it for some time, Wife bought me new
PC, it's got everything including Vista Ultimate, I took it off and put Xp
on, then I decided to put Vista on the other partition and give it a few
weeks to see how it went, well I know what a lot of people say about Vista,
but to be honest, I have got used to it and it's ok now, once I got rid of a
few things like UAC etc, due to the PC specs it runs very well and I have
decided to keep it, that's where my problem starts.

I installed XP first then Vista, set up a dual boot, but now I want to
remove Xp, is it possible to remove XP, and make the "D" (which is a
partition of a 360 gig drive) the "C" part of the drive, what I am trying
to do is keep vista without having to re-install and all the setting up that
comes with it.

Thanks

Gordon
 
No, unfortunately you are stuck with the D: drive letter. You can remove the
XP install but the C: 'boot partition' must remain. The only way to get
Vista on a C: drive would be a fresh install, and then use a saved 'Easy
Transfer' profile to restore data, (after reinstalling all additional apps.)

--
Please use the Communities guidelines when posting.
http://www.microsoft.com/wn3/locales/help/help_en-us.htm
Use the "Ratings" feature. It helps the new users.
Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Mark.Ferguson
 
Partly depends on how you installed Vista. If you installed so that Vista
shows as on D drive when in Vista, the answer is no as Mark says. If it
shows as C in Vista, and if you kept the two systems separate, then you
could do it with minimum problems. You will still have the drive as D in
the BIOS, but I assume you are just going to expand the drive to encompass
the whole drive. Post back if this meets your situation.
 
Hi
your right, I have Vista on the second partition and when I login it
says it is the "C" drive, but when I boot to Xp it says it is the "C"Drive
so I would like to remove XP and make the dive one big drive again, but as
you so rightly pointed out, Vista is actually on the "D" Partition of the
drive, will this become C or do I have to do something really complicated
and extreme ? to be honest with you, I have a little PC knowledge and with
the right guidance I am sure I could manage to put this right if it is at
all possible.

Thank you for your help so far

Gordon
 
Do you have a Vista DVD or restore DVD. I assume you have the Vista or you
wouldn't have been able to install Vista on your D drive.
I also assume you don't share any files from your XP partition and you kept
your two systems independent.

There are two ways you can set things up.

1 Delete all the XP folders from your XP partition (not the boot files),
shrink the partition so it only contains the boot files. You will then have
to use a third party partitioning product (several you can use free) to
increase the size of your Vista partition to take up the free space. Clean
up the boot files to remove the XP reference (free products EasyBCD or
VistaBootPro)
2. Change your Vista partition your active partition. Boot to the DVD and
run Start-up repair. This should install the Vista startup on the Vista
drive and you should be able to boot into Vista or XP. Earlier some had to
run this more than one time, up to three times. While no one has reported
back having a problem, you should be prepared to reset the XP partition
active using either your XP Repair Console or the diskpart command on the
Vista DVD. When you can get into Vista you can delete everything on the XP
partition. At this point you can delete the XP partition and see if you
have any problems running Vista. If no problems, use a third party
partitioning product to expand the Vista drive to the whole drive. If you
have any problems, create a new very small partition in the front of the
drive and then expand the Vista drive to the rest of the drive. Clean up
the boot files as above or rerun startup repair.

In either case make sure anything you have on the XP drive that you need to
save is moved to the Vista drive before deleting the XP files.
 
Back
Top