How do you delete an Old OS in a Dual OS machine?

[Guest]

I have two operating systems in my computer. W 98 and W XP Home. This is
because I upgraded my system from W 98 to W XP.

I have my system Hard drive set up, where I have two partitions (C & D). W
98 is located in Drive C which is formatted as FAT32 and W XP home is in D
formatted as NTFS. Now, when I boot up my system, it goes thru an initial
Black screen asking me which OS do I want to boot with, and I always pick XP.
This has been a bit annoying but I have learned to ignore it. However, it
does slow down the initial start up process.

My question is can I delete W98 from my machine since I don't need it anymore?
What is the best way to do this?
Can I just go to the C Drive and delete the Windows folder?
I am concerned that if I delete W98, there may be some shared folders that
might be needed for W XP to operate properly. I am concerned that my computer
will not boot up or work properly after the deletion of W 98.

All comments and advises are welcome.

Best regards,
Frank

 

[Richard Urban]

You are correct in your fears. Files necessary to boot up Windows XP likely
reside on your C: drive.

May I make a suggestion? Keep Win98 around for the few applications that
just won't run correctly on WinXP. You can change the boot loader to default
to WinXP and set a 5 sec delay (vs. the default 30 second delay).

Go to start. Right click on "My Computer". Go to properties/advanced
/startup and recovery. Choose the operating system you want the boot loader
to default to. Now set the time for 5 seconds in "Time to display list of
operating systems".

X out of the window.

Reboot to test!


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Regards,

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Guest]

Thanks Richard. At least this will speed up my start up.

The other reason I wanted to delete W98 is that I keep getting Warning
messages that I am running out of space on my C Drive. Although, I have
deleted / transfered many of the files on this drive, I can't get this
Warning message to go away. I still have about 30 Meg (6%) of free space left
on that partition.

I even tried to expand the size of the C partition to make more room but
since this portion of the Partition is in FAT 32, Windows will not allow me
to expand it w/o the risk of loosing my XP OS.

In someways I am stuck in a catch 22 cycle!!! DOes anyone know ho to shut
off this type of Warning Message?

 

[GTS]

I suggest you rename the Windows 98 directory on the C drive (from inside XP
of course) and use the computer that way for a bit. XP will not normally
reference any files in the Win 98 tree, but it's possible you have
application programs that do. If you find no problems with XP or
applications then go ahead and delete the Win 98 tree. You can then set a 0
timeout in the boot.ini or modify it (carefully) to remove the references to
Win 98.

Do NOT remove any files from the root of C: unless you understand exactly
what you're doing. This is where files needed to load XP reside.

 

[Guest]

Thanks STS. I will give this a shot and see how it works.

BTW - The files I removed were mainly non essentials. I did not touch any of
the system (32) type folders.

Regards,
Frank

 

[GTS]

You're welcome. I respect your cautious approach to all this - very
sensible!
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