I need help with XP Dual boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter kpitao
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kpitao

Hi all,

I need some help here, my hard drive has two partitions, XP Pro installed on
both, the first XP (C:/ local drive) it has a lot problems. I want to delete
the first partition and make the second one active. How do I do this? Can I
just copy the Boot.ini file from the first to the second and delete the first
one?
 
kpitao said:
Hi all,

I need some help here, my hard drive has two partitions, XP Pro installed
on
both, the first XP (C:/ local drive) it has a lot problems. I want to
delete
the first partition and make the second one active. How do I do this? Can
I
just copy the Boot.ini file from the first to the second and delete the
first
one?
Click to expand...

You must retain the first partition in order to maintain your drive letters.
To clean up things safely you can do this:
1. Boot into WinXP on drive D:.
2. Rename c:\Windows to c:\Windows.bad.
3. Wait two or three days.
4. If all is well, delete c:\Windows.bad.
5. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 for c:\Program Files.
6. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 for c:\Documents and Settings.
Note that Steps 6 will delete all your data files including your EMail
files. You must back them up if you wish to keep them!
 
In Pegasus [MVP] typed on Fri, 9 Oct 2009 00:30:31 +0200:
You must retain the first partition in order to maintain your drive
letters. To clean up things safely you can do this:
1. Boot into WinXP on drive D:.
2. Rename c:\Windows to c:\Windows.bad.
3. Wait two or three days.
4. If all is well, delete c:\Windows.bad.
5. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 for c:\Program Files.
6. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 for c:\Documents and Settings.
Note that Steps 6 will delete all your data files including your EMail
files. You must back them up if you wish to keep them!
Click to expand...

No you don't need to keep the first partition to retain drive letters.
That was only true of DOS, Win9x, and ME.

You need to copy the following three files to drive D.

boot.ini
NTDETECT.COM
ntldr

Be prepared to use a boot disc like the Recovery Console, BartPE, or
whatever. As you will need to adjust the boot.ini with Notepad or
something. And it might take two or three tries before you get it right
before and then again after you delete the first partition.

Lots of utilities to change the active partition. But you are going to
need a partition manager anyway to resize and/or move the new active
partition after the first one is deleted, if that is what you want to
do. There are some free ones that can do both of these jobs.

EASEUS Partition Manager (free)

Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 Express (free)
 
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