How do I remove Vista from a partition?

[Nick the Kiwi]

To make sure Vista would work with all my hardware and programs, I created a
second partition on my XP machine and installed Vista on there (Vista Home
Premium). All my hardware and my important programs worked so I thought I'd
bite the bullet and upgrade my XP installation on the first partition. That
also worked OK (apart from losing all my Music and Videos which I am
restoring from backup, at present) and I have used EasyBCD to remove the
entry for the copy of Vista on my second partition but I can't seem to delete
all the directories and files that are on there. It says I don't have
permission to many of them. I also keep Norton Ghost backups on that
partition so I don't really want to format it. As I am logged on as an
Administrator, why don't I have access to everything? What can I do to allow
myself to delete all the Windows files and directories?

 

[Jawade]

To make sure Vista would work with all my hardware and programs, I created a
second partition on my XP machine and installed Vista on there (Vista Home
Premium). All my hardware and my important programs worked so I thought I'd
bite the bullet and upgrade my XP installation on the first partition. That
also worked OK (apart from losing all my Music and Videos which I am
restoring from backup, at present) and I have used EasyBCD to remove the
entry for the copy of Vista on my second partition but I can't seem to delete
all the directories and files that are on there. It says I don't have
permission to many of them. I also keep Norton Ghost backups on that
partition so I don't really want to format it. As I am logged on as an
Administrator, why don't I have access to everything? What can I do to allow
myself to delete all the Windows files and directories?

You can try it in safe mode.

 

[JethroUK]

Just reformat it - solong as there is nothing else on that partition

 

[kurttrail]

To make sure Vista would work with all my hardware and programs, I
created a second partition on my XP machine and installed Vista on there
(Vista Home Premium). All my hardware and my important programs worked
so I thought I'd bite the bullet and upgrade my XP installation on the
first partition. That also worked OK (apart from losing all my Music and
Videos which I am restoring from backup, at present) and I have used
EasyBCD to remove the entry for the copy of Vista on my second partition
but I can't seem to delete all the directories and files that are on
there. It says I don't have permission to many of them. I also keep
Norton Ghost backups on that partition so I don't really want to format
it. As I am logged on as an Administrator, why don't I have access to
everything? What can I do to allow myself to delete all the Windows
files and directories?

You could download a Linux LiveCD and use that to delete any Vista files
you want.

I used PCLinuxOS Gnome 2008 LiveCD just last night, but most popular
distro have LiveCDs. Even if you never use Linux as your day to day OS,
having a LiveCD lying around comes in handy from time to time.

You can find a lotta different choices at:
http://distrowatch.com/

--
Peace!
Kurt
Former Self-anointed Moderator
microscum.pubic.windowsexp.gonorrhea
"Produkt-Aktivierung macht frei!"

 

[Nick the Kiwi]

I'm not sure it is that easy to get Linux working on my machine because my
hard drive is RAID 10. I once used a Paragon backup which came with a
recovery CD. That recovery CD was a version of Linux which refused to see my
hard drives so wasn't much use.

However, that has got me thinking and I could look at booting using my
Norton Ghost recovery CD which does see the RAID array and perhaps while
booted from that I can have the access I need to delete those unwanted
directories.

 

[Nick the Kiwi]

I may end up having to do that. Note that I said I do keep my Norton Ghost
backups on there. If I can't find a better way, I will back those up to my
external drive and reformat the partition.

 

[RalfG]

Because they were created by a different Vista installation you (current
user) don't have ownership of those folders. Once you take ownership you
should be able to do whatever you want with the contents. Using Explorer,
right click and select Properties on the drive/partition, then Security
tab->Advanced button -Owner Tab->Edit button and take ownership there. Tick
the box for sub-containers and objects as well.

 

[Nick the Kiwi]

I took ownership of those directories, as you described, but still could not
delete them. I decided in the end to just back up the 90GB of Ghost backups
to an external drive then formatted the partition. At least it let me do that!