Dual Boot Change

[John]

My PC came with one 20 gig hard drive with 98se, later partitioned it in 2
partitions.
Added a second 40 gig hard drive and installed XP Pro on it, it's also
partitioned in 2 partitions.
I have been using the dual boot since then, and now want to use just XP Pro.

I have images of both 98se and XP Pro, but I don't know what's the best way
to go about making the change to just XP Pro. I don't think I could use my
images for this, but not sure.

I don't know what would happen if I totally removed the 20 gig, and put the
40 gig in it's place. Would it even boot? And if it did I'm concerned about
settings in the registry that are pointing to XP Pro on D:\ and not C:\.

What would be the best and safest way to do this? I know I could swap the
drives, reformat, and reinstall XP Pro and all the programs, but that could
take a while to do when I think about the extra setting involved.
All partitions are FAT 32 right now.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi John,

Removing Win98 and setting up a boot straight to WinXP is easy enough, but
your problem is going to be if you remove the old hard drive, as that is
where your boot files are.

To simply remove Win98, just boot WinXP and delete the Win98 system folders
from C:\. Then, start/run msconfig, go to the boot.ini tab and click on the
entry that loads WinXP. Click "set as default" if it is not already. Then
click the button to "check all boot paths", and it should offer to remove
the invalid one for Win98. If it doesn't, you might need to reboot first.
Otherwise you will need to manually remove it by editing boot.ini in
notepad.

If you wish to remove the primary hard drive and set the drive containing
WinXP as the sole one, you may be able to get by by reconfiguring the
hardware, then loading the Recovery Console and running fixboot from the
Command Prompt.

HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console in Windows XP [Q307654]
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307654

Otherwise, you will need to do a repair installation:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[t.cruise]

Check here:

http://tinyurl.com/3r9nz