XP & Vista Dual Boot ---> Vista only. How?

[none]

Hello all,
I have XP and Vista in dual boot on one disk. I've been running them
both while I configured Vista with all the old apps that accumulated
on XP over the years. Now that Vista seems to be running everything
properly, I'd like to remove the XP partiiton. Specifically XP is on
the first partition, and Vista on the second.

My plan is to ghost images of both for safekeeping, then use
partitioning software to remove the existing partitions and creat a
new, larger, one for Vista. Then ghost the Vista image back to the
new partition.

Now, I expect to have a problem booting immediately because the Vista
image won't have a proper boot loader when it's the only bootable
partition. So, to correct this, I planned to use the "Boot Repair"
option on the Vista setup disk.

My question is: Will this work, and if not, what would be the best
approach?

Thanks in advance

 

[none]

Please do not try this... It did not work for me.. i had the same
partitions and i tried to remove xp but when the computer restarts, it
gives an error, Disk read error occured!

That's exactly what I'd expect if you tried to boot off the restored
Vista partition. It can't boot because Vista's boot loader was
located on the XP partition, and that's now gone!

However, there's a untlity on the Vista setup disk that repairs the
boot loader. I've played with it a few times already in the process
of setting up this dual boot configuration. I've wiped out Vista
completely at least twice, and restored XP from a pre-Vista image
once, which, naturally, didn't have the boot loader. Vista was still
there on the second partition, but inaccessible. Running the boot
loader repair utility restored everything necessary to dual-boot
again.

That's why I suspect that my plan can work, but unfortunately haven't
tested thisi particular scenario.

Thanks for the words of warning though.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

This article is about recovering the boot after installing XP as a dual
boot, but the steps necessary are the same:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[GrahamH]

Why not just leave XP on there?
It may be useful at some time if only for test purposes.
If your running low on disk space on Vista then remove all software and
utilities from XP, shrink the partition down then resize the Vista partition
from the free space you gained.
Just a thought.
Graham....

 

[Steve R]

Hi,

This article is about recovering the boot after installing XP as a dual
boot, but the steps necessary are the same:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

Good article. Thanks!

To everyone who's replied -- I'm gonna do an experiment:

Clone the Vista partition onto an unused disk. Disconnect all the
drives, and substitute the cloned Vista. See if it works after
repairing the boot loader. If it does, then the plan to remove XP
will work, if not, then I'll take Graham's suggestion and just shrink
XP down to a minimum and ignore it.

I'll post back with the results for future reference.