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How to Dump Vista - Safely

J

jimmyj68

Senior member
I have WINXP Pro on my C: drive and Vista RC1 on my D: drive. I have consistent problems with my e-mail not working on XP and working on Vista (for a while, a very short while) and then no properly functioning e-mail on either operating system.

What is the quickest and SAFEST way to dump Vista from my D: drive. It doesn't show up in programs on XP Pro control panel so I can't just delete, and something tells me that my first thought - to format D: drive - could get me in a whole lot of trouble.

Whadya think?
 
Boot into XP Pro and edit your boot.ini file manually (hidden file so you'll have to unhide it in explorer options) or I believe you might be able to do this with the msconfig utility. I've always just gone the manual route. Once you delete the Vista installation on the ini file the boot loader will automatically go into XP. The Vista build is not doing anything to your XP installation however.
 
Thanks.

I'm a little wary of what is going on if Vista can't effect XP Pro. I just finished a day or two ago upgrading to a C2D machine without formating or otherwise or otherwise. After installing the new motherboard and CPU/memory etc. I did an XP Pro repair-reinstall and have been running smoothly until I put Vista on the otherwise empty drive D:

I'm off to try your cure.
 
like it was said 100! times already, vista uses brand new boot loader, that is going to remain even after vista partition is removed.
 
Is your email outlook express, web mail, Outlook, or some other application?
I cant see how an OS can give you problems in email on a different installed OS, unless Vista is putting files into the C drive

I have no problems with RC1 on my E drive and xp on C, Im using Outlook 2003
 
Thanks all for your help. I bungled through before the input of Aluvus (thank you) and after the input of ktwebb (thank you).

For some reason I could not find the boot.ini to edit it so I formatted the D: drive and then did a repair reinstall of winXP - I knew there was no way the Longhorn boot would survive that - or any other remnants of Vista.

I then made what I think is a big mistake. Trying to catch-up I went to the microsoft update pages and downloaded every hot fix update and security patch all at one time. Don't think XP could swallow all of that at once - system very unstable. tried to fix by downloading IE 7 (web pages very slow after the massive fix download and web pages unstable), that didn't work either - couldn't download new IE 7 and now IE 6 even more screwed up. Restored to an earlier time in the evening - before all of my "tricks" and everything now seems to be OK. I'm going to allow XP automatic download do things at its own pace.

Again thanks to everyone.

This all started when I lost my e-mail. First, the sensitive e-mail in Vista would drop off line because it felt something in my mail was a security risk. It would immediately reopen the mail program but see the entry that caused it to drop off and immediately drop off again. Finally was quick enough to hit the down arrow to the next message before the mail security protected me???. Finally it dropped off and didn't come back.

Decided to close Vista, reboot, and open XP. Outlook express refused to even open and left a permanent reporting error for outlook express and Dr.Watson on the desktop. The only way they would leave is by a reboot. They immediately returned if I tried to open Outlook Express.

I blamed Vista because I had taken advantage of the option in Vista to change the boot listing priority making "an earlier windows" the default. Don't know if that was in any way the cause of the problems - but too late now - Vista, boot.ini and all are gone until the real Vista stands up.

HOLY COW - - - - JUST ATTEMPTED TO OPEN OUTLOOK EXPRESS AND GOT THE "ENCOUNTERED AN ERROR BOX". cLICKED DON'T REPORT AND THE DR.WATSON ERROR BOX CAME UP. THEY WON'T GO AWAY AND ARE BEHIND THIS ANANDTECH WEB FUNCTION. wHAT IS GOING ON?????

 
Id setup a new user account on the machine, then configure OE to download the emails and see if the OE gives the error again..if not, then its the .DBX files that are causing a problem under the original account.
There is an option when setting up the POP servers to leave emails on the server....ENABLE this so you dont lose any emails...

OE emails are store in .DBX files, there should be Inbox.dbx, Sent Items.dbx, etc, etc.
 
It started working again and frankly I don't know why. Logged into IE and checked all available settings and options - don't think I changed anything. Tried to go to mail from IE 7 and it did. Exited IE-7 opened mail and it has been working ever since. Who knows? I don't.
 
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