How can I get rid of my old system partition/drive?

[DougFrippon]

Well long story short, I just bought a new HD, on which I installed a fresh WinXP. And even if this new HD is pluged in the SATA1 plug, and has his priority set to first in the boot.. windows sees it as D: (I'd want it to be C: )

I decided to clear all my old hard drive and format it, but windows won't let me format it cuz there's still my old windows installation on it . How can I format the drive? Am I forced to use a special software like partition magic or whatever, and use it outside windows?

 

[Navid]

That is because, you left the old drive in while it had XP installed on it while you did the new install.

Place your XP CD in your optical drive.
Shut down.
Disconnect all the other hard drives.
Power on and boot to the CD and re-install XP on your new drive.

 

[DougFrippon]

wow! You mean I'm forced to format again just for that, there has to be another solution

why does windows prevent you from deleting / formating ANOTHER intsallation of windows that's not even being used anyway? whats the reasoning behind that

 

[Navid]

You have not explained exactly what you did!
But, if you boot into XP and then place the XP CD in the drive and start an install, the new install sees that another XP exists and keeps the boot/system drive unchanged. So, an important part of the new installation remains on the original install. Without that (boot/system partition), the second new install will not boot.

As I said, I am not sure if that is what has happened. But, if it is, your problem is not to delete the old install. Your problem is that you did not make a fresh/self-contained install!
Even if you get rid of the old drive, your new installation will still remain D.

How did you exactly install XP. What was the order and what did you do?

 

[DougFrippon]

1. Pluged the new HD in Sata1, placed the old HD in Sata2
2. Rebooted computer and booted on WinXP CD
3. Installed WinXP on my new HD, and didnt touch the old HD with the old windows.

thats pretty much it

 

[nova2]

i would've tried moving or copying all data from old drive to new drive (just so i can keep all winxp hacks/settings/etc), and then fixing the MBR on the new drive using acronis trueimage or MBRWiz via BartPE.

if i did it that way i could probably get it to work out fine.

but i have no idea if you yourself will have success with that method.

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: DougFrippon
1. Pluged the new HD in Sata1, placed the old HD in Sata2
2. Rebooted computer and booted on WinXP CD
3. Installed WinXP on my new HD, and didnt touch the old HD with the old windows.

thats pretty much it

If you had disconnected the old drive while you did that, it would have worked perfectly.
Do it again and try that.
You may also have to enter the BIOS to make sure that the new drive is on the BIOS boot device list.

After the install is complete, connect the old drive and reboot and enter the BIOS again and make sure that the new drive is ahead in the boot priority list. Then, it will boot to the new install and the old drive will automatically be given a different drive letter.

If you then want to boot to the old drive, you can go back to the BIOS and place the old drive ahead of the new drive in the boot priority list. Then, it will boot to the old drive and the old drive will be on C and the new drive will automatically be given a different drive letter.

New motherboards let you press F8 or F12 or another one of the function keys to get into a boot list and you can pick the device to boot to. Then, you don't have to enter the BIOS every time you want to boot to a different drive.

 

[Navid]

There is no point to try to fix it now. All references on the new install are to drive D. Even if you change the drive letter, many executables will fail. it is not worth the trouble. Just do it right from the beginning.

 

[DougFrippon]

ok, so let's say I don't care that the drive letter is D.
Let's say all I want to do is format my old drive and erase the old window installation, how do I do?

 

[ForumMaster]

in windows setup when you format the drives, delete the partition on the drive that you no longer need. and as for Navid's last post, in partition magic, you get a tool that will run through the entire registry/shortcuts and whatnot and change a path so it can be done.

 

[Navid]

1- Backup your irreplaceable data.
2- Disconnect the old drive.
3- Enter the BIOS and make sure that the new drive is the first on the boot priority list.
4- Place the XP CD in your drive and reboot. Perform a repair. This should create the missing boot.ini and the other files needed on the boot partition.


I still am not sure why you do not want to do a fresh install.
It is best to have Windows on the C drive.
It is easiest to do a clean install right to get it on C.
It is possible to change the boot drive letter. As I said before, it is not worth the trouble.