multiple XP installations

[Paul H]

My first attempt at building my own PC has left me with
one question. I installed my old 40 gig HD into my new
machine. I installed (not copied)XP Pro on my new drive
and completed the phone activation. Now when I boot up if
lets me choose which XP I want. E: is default and C:
(old drive) is an option. I want to use the current C:
as a slave drive and boot from E: all the time. Can I
safely uninstall XP from my C: drive to remove the option
at bootup? Can I change the drive letters for a more
routine configuration of booting from C: by default?
Thanks!

 

[Wendy\(v-2wends\)]

There are a couple of things you can do here to clean up your computer a
bit. First of all, if you did a clean install of windows xp on the c:, then
there is no possibility of uninstalling it, best thing to do would be to
make sure any important information is not on that drive and format it. This
will leave it blank and allow you to use it as a slave. This will not bother
your E drive, that you also have an installation on, as it is a totally
different hard drive(right) and even if it were just another partition, it
would be fine as well. This is because when you format something it erases
what was in that space, but any walls(partitions) will be left alone. So you
should be able to use your E drive as your primary drive.
Also far as changing the drive letters, it can sometimes be tricky, I found
a knowledge base article that describes how you can change the letters.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307844

 

[Alex Nichol]

I want to use the current C:
as a slave drive and boot from E: all the time. Can I
safely uninstall XP from my C: drive to remove the option
at bootup? Can I change the drive letters for a more
routine configuration of booting from C: by default?

If you copy the boot files
ntldr
ntdetect.com
boot.ini
from the root of C: to the root of E: (have Folder Options - View set
to show Hidden files, and *not* Hide Protected mode ones) you can then
set the E: partition as the active one to boot to it direct; and can
remove the references in the boot.ini to the system on C: and do what
you want with all files in C:. MAke sure that the installation folder
used by programs as default is E:\Program Files, not C:\Program files

The letter E: though will be so pervasive in its registry that it is
impracticable to change it, other than setting out on a new clean
install