How to uninstall a Vista Beta/RC

[Sunil Sood]

I installed one of the Vista Release Candiates some time ago and I'd like to
know the best way to uninstall/remove it.

The system has two drives attached

Drive 1: Windows XP
Drive 2: Windows Vista

together with the Vista bootloader.

Normally I would just format the 2nd drive, but there are some other files
on the drive which I would like to keep, so is there another way for me to
delete Vista from that partition? (I did try just deleting the files from
within XP but they seem to be write protected)

Alternatively, what would happen if I just installed the the RTM build over
the RC - would that work?

Also, how do I remove/replace the Vista bootloader with the XP one?

Regards
Sunil

 

[kirk jim]

1) move the files into Drive 1,

2) Boot into XP and
use http://www.vistabootpro.org/ that is free and will remove the vista
bootloader.

3) Format the drive 2

4) Optional.. make a vow to never ever return to the most problematic OS of
all times> vista!

 

[Sunil Sood]

3) Format the drive 2

Sorry, I should have included in the original post, that I'm looking for an
alternative to formatting Drive 2 - as drive 1 doesn't have enough free
space for the files.. otherwise I would have copied them over..

Regards
Sunil

 

[kirk jim]

Hmmm.....you can try to use this free app>>>
http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

From XP this will allow you to delete the vista files, even if you will need
to select the option,
delete that may prompt you to restart in order to delete.

I have not actually done this thing with vista, but with 2 XP
installations... so if you try it,
your input is valuable so I will know what to advise other people too....


OR

I will give you 1 more option in case the above fails.. it needs some
shuffling things around so it may be more advanced.

Im not sure if you can still boot into Vista,
if you can you can go to control panel, administrative tools> disk
management,
and resize the vista partition to make it smaller, then create a new empty
partition and move your files there. Then after you do the steps I said you
can format the Vista partition (care is needed don't format the wrong drive
with your files!)

If you have a disk utility like acronis, paragon disk manager or partition
magic (only compatible with XP) these may help you manage the drive
partitions better.

good luck!

 

[Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]]

Right click the drive on which Vista is installed in XP, and click Format.