I want to delete my Vista partition but still be able to boot into XP

[lokiju]

I have my HDD split into two partitions on one is XP Pro and the other is Vista RC1, I wanna format the partition that contains Vista RC1 so I can reclaim it as usable space but am weary of making my system non-bootable by doing so.

Whats the safest/best way to do this?

:beer:

 

[phile]

Formatting the Vista partition will not harm anything, but you will still have the Vista bootloader on your primary (XP) partition. What you need to do is remove the Vista bootloader.

Method #1:
Boot with the XP CD and choose to repair current installation. When you arrive at the prompt type the following commands:

>fixmbr
>fixboot

Method #2:
Download and install VistaBootPRO (you can install and run this on either XP or Vista).
http://www.vistabootpro.org/

There is an option in this program to remove the Vista bootloader.

-phil

 

[postmortemIA]

safest way is to read other 1,000,000 posts about this

EDIT we need some general guide

+ sticky for this.

 

[APE992]

I reccomend going with phile's idea. If you don't mind the bootloader it should still have a listing for Vista which can be removed from boot.ini I believe. I haven't messed with NTLoader in a while, let alone at all with Vista. As long as you do things right you'll be fine, and if you botch the MBR it's not that hard to fix.

 

[postmortemIA]

nope Vista listing is not in boot.ini.

 

[APE992]

Maybe the loader handles Vista and anything additional on it's own using boot.ini as a reference? I'm not sure, since it apparently didn't modify your boot.ini file you should be good just wiping out the vista loader and throwing the NTLoader back on through XP's install disk.

 

[lokiju]

Originally posted by: phile
Formatting the Vista partition will not harm anything, but you will still have the Vista bootloader on your primary (XP) partition. What you need to do is remove the Vista bootloader.

Method #1:
Boot with the XP CD and choose to repair current installation. When you arrive at the prompt type the following commands:

>fixmbr
>fixboot

Method #2:
Download and install VistaBootPRO (you can install and run this on either XP or Vista).
http://www.vistabootpro.org/

There is an option in this program to remove the Vista bootloader.

-phil

I did method # 2 and it worked without any issues.

Thanks!