Removing Vista from a dual boot w/XP: fixmbr/fixboot not restoring boot.ini

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dan
  • Start date Start date
D

Dan

I have a 2 hdd system with 3 OS's:

1) XP on C:\, the 1st partition of SATA hdd 1. This was the 1st OS installed
on the newly build machine. This is the partition which has the "boot"
directory containing the BCD files.
2) Vista on J:\, partition one of my 2nd SATA drive. The 2nd OS installed on
the machine.
3) Vista on F:\, partition 3 of SATA drive 1 (this installation was an
error, I meant to replace the Vista J:\, but it installed a fresh copy here
instead).

I want to remove Vista entirely. I have tried running fixmbr followed by
fixboot from the repair console, directing it to C:\. Also tried running
them in the opposite order (fixboot followed by fixmbr). In both cases, the
Vista boot menu still appears as it did before I ran these repairs. I am
afraid to wipe the Vista partitions under these circumstances, for fear of
not being able to boot into XP. How can I restore boot.ini & XP as the sole
OS?

Thanks

Dan
 
Use VistaBootPRO: http://www.vistabootpro.org/

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/


---------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| I have a 2 hdd system with 3 OS's:
|
| 1) XP on C:\, the 1st partition of SATA hdd 1. This was the 1st OS installed
| on the newly build machine. This is the partition which has the "boot"
| directory containing the BCD files.
| 2) Vista on J:\, partition one of my 2nd SATA drive. The 2nd OS installed on
| the machine.
| 3) Vista on F:\, partition 3 of SATA drive 1 (this installation was an
| error, I meant to replace the Vista J:\, but it installed a fresh copy here
| instead).
|
| I want to remove Vista entirely. I have tried running fixmbr followed by
| fixboot from the repair console, directing it to C:\. Also tried running
| them in the opposite order (fixboot followed by fixmbr). In both cases, the
| Vista boot menu still appears as it did before I ran these repairs. I am
| afraid to wipe the Vista partitions under these circumstances, for fear of
| not being able to boot into XP. How can I restore boot.ini & XP as the sole
| OS?
|
| Thanks
|
| Dan
 
Hi Dan,

Are there any IDE drives connected? Also, I'd try it without the 2nd SATA
drive attached (just unplug the two cables while it's shut down).

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Rick Rogers said:
Hi Dan,

Are there any IDE drives connected? Also, I'd try it without the 2nd SATA
drive attached (just unplug the two cables while it's shut down).

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
Click to expand...

Funny you should ask! Yes, there are 2 ide drives, however they are storage
only (no os's) so I didn't think they'd matter. I wondered about
disconnecting the other SATA as well, thanks for the tip.

Dan
 
Hi Dan,

It seems to be a an issue with Vista that if IDE drives are installed, it
buggers with writing the bootstrap code to SATA drives. You may want to
check and see if Vista setup wrote the bootloader to one of them instead. It
would explain why running fixmbr/fixboot on the SATA drive didn't do
anything.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
An alternative method is this (in addition to disconnecting the 2nd SATA
drive):

In order to safely remove Vista and get back that Windows XP’s bootloader,
perform the following steps:-

Boot into Windows XP
Open Command Prompt. To open command prompt click ‘Start’ > ‘Run’. Type ‘cmd’
without quotes and press OK.
Type ‘cd c:\boot\’ , (where ‘c:’ is your Windows XP’s installation drive)
without quotes and press Enter key.
Now type the command ‘fixntfs -xp’ without quotes and press Enter key.
Restart the machine. Windows XP’s bootloader should be back now.
Save any data that you wish to keep from the Windows Vista partition by
copying it into the Windows XP’s partition.
Now lets format the Windows Vista partition. If you do not wish to format
your Vista partition, but just delete the Vista files, skip to step 10. Go
to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management.
Click on Disk Management.
Right click the Windows Vista’s partition and click Format and follow the
instructions.
If you do not wish to format your partition and just wish to delete the
Windows Vista’s folders, you can follow the steps given in “Permission
denied” - Data recovery in Windows XP. Follow the steps that talk about
taking ownership of the data/ folders to take ownership of Windows Vista’s
folders. One you have taken the ownership of the Windows Vista folders you
will be able to delete them.

CH
 
Put the Vista DVD in the drive and open a cod prompt as administrator.
run: X:\boot\bootsect /nt52 c: /Force Where X is the driveletter from yor
DVD drive.

You will get error hence the /force in the cmd because the bootsector is in
use, after a reboot you will be back to the XP boot only.

Ko.
 
I have run across this issue a few times now.

All IDE drives and secondary SATA drives should be disconnected when you
install Vista. This way ALL of the necessary code is installed in the
desired drive/partition.

After a successful boot into Vista, shut down and reconnect your other
drives.

NOTE: If you try to do a full system restore the same applies. I have had to
save the full system restore to another partition on the system drive to get
around this.

TrueImage HOME 10.0 (latest version please) negates the above. You can
restore with all drives connected.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Thanks for the replies. I ran VistaBoot Pro & under Bootloader selected
"Unistall the Vista boot loader/restore legacy OS. The pc now boots
directly into XP. I removed the 2nd SATA drive (which contained the initial
Vista install) to be sure no crucial boot function was located there, pc
still boots into XP ok. Formatted the partition containing this Vista. So
far so good. My concern is the 2nd vista install (3rd os installed after 1)
xp & 2) the now removed Vista on the aforementioned 2nd sata) . This
remaining Vista is on partition 3 of sata 1. The XP I want to retain is on
partition 1 of this drive, along with the boot directory containing the BCD
files etc. I am concered that if I just go ahead & format this Vista
partition, I may still have some boot issue re: XP. Since it's a partition
not a drive, I can't simply remove it as a test. One thing I note: boot.ini
on C:\ (where XP is) has not changed in this process. Same content & file
date. Might this indicate boot info/process is taking place somewhere other
than c:\?

Thanks again,

Dan
 
Hi,

You've answered your own question. As Vista's boot files (the BCD stuff) is
on the XP volume, that is where it was loading from. VBP has taken care of
repointing the mbr to ntldr, so you should be fine to format the 3rd
partition.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Thanks Rick!

Dan

Rick Rogers said:
Hi,

You've answered your own question. As Vista's boot files (the BCD stuff)
is on the XP volume, that is where it was loading from. VBP has taken care
of repointing the mbr to ntldr, so you should be fine to format the 3rd
partition.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
Click to expand...
 
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