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greshoff
10-04-2007, 18:33
Hi,

I have hard drive with 2 partitions with a dual boot setup with vista &
XP. How can I remove the XP boot, so Vista is the only booting OS.

What I thought of doing is making an image of the Vista partition, then using Partition Magic formatting the Vista partition and merging it with the XP partition then restoring the Vista partition to the merged drive.

Would this work if not howwould I go about doing this.

Many thanks for any advice
Fat Jez
10-04-2007, 19:02
You should be able to delete the XP partition using the disk management tools built into Vista and then extend your Vista partition into the unused space. Then down load a tool like Vista Boot Pro (http://www.pro-networks.org/vistabootpro/) to remove the XP config from the boot loader.

Cheers,
Stephen
Cosmo_1847
10-04-2007, 19:03
I think what you need to do is remove the XP partition and then make the vista partition the bootable one. This can be done with fdisk or testdisk I think.
greshoff
10-04-2007, 19:14
How can I extend the vista partition into the unused space, Partition Magic is not compatiblewith Vista

You should be able to delete the XP partition using the disk management tools built into Vista and then extend your Vista partition into the unused space. Then down load a tool like Vista Boot Pro (http://www.pro-networks.org/vistabootpro/) to remove the XP config from the boot loader.

Cheers,
Stephen
Fat Jez
10-04-2007, 19:55
You can extend partitions using the disk management tools in Vista.

Cheers,
Stephen
greshoff
10-04-2007, 19:57
That is good to know, it will make things easier.
greshoff
11-04-2007, 11:35
Hi,

I had a look in the disk management & the extend option is Greyed out. You can extend partitions using the disk management tools in Vista.

Cheers,
Stephen
RND
13-04-2007, 13:48
I had a similar problem yesterday when I decided to remove Linux. Grub left a trace and therefore Vista was unbootable. I found this method saved the day:

1. Boot from your Vista CD
2. When you see Install button, click the repair one instead
3. Open a command prompt
4. bcdedit /export c:\BCD_Backup
5. c:
6. cd boot
7. attrib BCD -s -h -r
8. ren c:\boot\BCD BCD.old
9. bootrec /rebuildbcd
10. bootrec /fixmbr
11. bootrec /fixboot
Fireblade
13-04-2007, 20:58
Whilst there are undoubtedly those who understand what you've said/done there RND, I wouldn't expect anyone else to go ahead inputting something like that, without knowing exactly what it's gonna do to their system!?
RND
14-04-2007, 10:43
unfortunately, sometimes the solutions are not always easy. Basically, it restores the Vista boot system.
Chenks
15-07-2007, 17:46
just tried your instructions and these worked perfectly.
booting straight to vista now :D
ojobson
17-11-2007, 12:02
I'm using diskpart.exe to delete my xp volume, however I get told that the volume with XP on it is in use and that I need to use the OVERRIDE parameter to do it. Why is it in use, if use the override param then will vista still boot and is their anything else I need to know?

Thanks.
ojobson
17-11-2007, 12:55
I had a similar problem yesterday when I decided to remove Linux. Grub left a trace and therefore Vista was unbootable. I found this method saved the day:

1. Boot from your Vista CD
2. When you see Install button, click the repair one instead
3. Open a command prompt
4. bcdedit /export c:\BCD_Backup
5. c:
6. cd boot
7. attrib BCD -s -h -r
8. ren c:\boot\BCD BCD.old
9. bootrec /rebuildbcd
10. bootrec /fixmbr
11. bootrec /fixboot

Tried the above but windows failed to start due to a problem with the boot record so I had to repair using the vista disc but now the boot record is on the Vista (C) drive.

Do I now need to switch the active volume from D (xp) to C (vista)? how do I do that? After which I assume I will be ok to delete the xp volume.

Thanks for your help - I have been searching all morning but the resolution for this problem isn't very well explained in the few cases its documented...
Moira
21-11-2007, 06:43
I find it hard to see how you could do a non destructive repartitioning. You could just set the waiting time to zero and vista as the default OS? From Vista you can delete xp and format that partition. Try EasyBCD (http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1) to easily manipulate the bcdedit file in Vista and remove unwanted XP entries.
Aztec
06-08-2008, 03:58
i install vista & XP like this:

install vista on raid0,
unplug the raid array
install XP on another raid 0 array

plug all 4 drives in, then the bootsectors are seperate, press f8 at bootup and choose which OS to boot.
Fireblade
06-08-2008, 09:38
Welcome to last year :)

And that particular advice will only help those who are running the same setup - i.e. RAID 0/4 drives.
Aztec
06-08-2008, 11:13
Well it works, installing vista and xp on two seperate partitions is never a good idea in the first place.
Westy5
06-08-2008, 12:46
Well it works, installing vista and xp on two seperate partitions is never a good idea in the first place.

Eh?

That's what most people would recommend...
Aztec
06-08-2008, 13:53
i mean on the same hard drive
Fireblade
07-08-2008, 05:07
i mean on the same hard drive

That's still what most people do :confused:
Moira
11-08-2008, 00:47
My setup doesn't include raid though. Anyway, I don't think I'm too bothered about a vista and xp partition, but I would like a linux/vista dual boot. I may just run linux on a VM.