***** Remove Dual Boot & Switch Hard Drive *****

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jean-Philippe Guilbeau
  • Start date Start date
J

Jean-Philippe Guilbeau

Greetings from Belgium,

For professional reasons, I have a PC with a dual boot system running on two
hard drives:
Drive C: Windows 98 SE
Drive D: Windows XP Professional SP1

The dual boot system is a pure dual boot system; it has not been made via
any third part system!

Because of the lack of customers still using Windows 98 SE, I would like:
1. to remove the dual boot system
2. to take the D: drive and put it as C:
3. take the C: drive, reformat it and put as a D: (slave drive)

How could I execute those three steps with harming all my currently D: drive
content?

I thought of switching the drives position on the data cable and of
reformatting my old Windows 98 SE would be an easy process but some people
told me that. by just physically switching the drives position on the data
cable, it would not work? Is it right? Why? Is it a matter of Registry file?
Would it be because, in the Registry file, all the installed software would
refer to a D: drive? Is there a software being able to update the Registry
file properly?

Thanks for any help you could provide in this matter,

Jean-Philippe GUILBEAU
 
best way is to move any files etc on C that you wish to keep and send them
to D, then format C, you should then have no trouble renaming
billy
 
What about the references to the D: drive in the Registry file???????? Will
they be automatically updated????????

Jean-Philippe GUILBEAU
 
There is another problem in that the boot INI and some other necessary boot
files will have been installed by XP in the boot sector of C drive with the
rest of XP on D. Proceed with caution.


Richard.


..
 
Hi Jean-Philippe,

Complicated. Your boot files are likely on C: with the Win98 system. You
will need, at the very least, to run a repair installation of WinXP with it
set as the boot (active) drive and in the master position. You'd be best off
to have the existing C:\ drive (and anything like a zip drive) totally
disconnected at this point. You cannot change the drive letter assigned to
the WinXP system partition otherwise.

Follow these steps to do a repair install which should preserve your data,
settings, and programs:

1. Insert the Windows XP CD into your computer's CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM
drive.
2. Restart your computer. If you have to, change the BIOS settings to start
from
the CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart your computer again.
3. At the "Welcome to Setup" page, press ENTER.
4. Press F8 to accept the Licensing Agreement.
5. Use the arrow keys to select the installation of Windows XP that you want
to
repair, and then press R to start the automatic repair process.
6. When Setup is completed, activate Windows XP.

Note that you will need your Product Key for this procedure, so have it
handy before you begin. Afterwards, you can reconnect the Win98 drive and
format it from Windows Explorer.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
 
Jean-Philippe Guilbeau said:
What about the references to the D: drive in the Registry
file???????? Will they be automatically updated????????
Click to expand...

No, they will not be updated automatically. The warnings people have
given you need to be heeded. If the drive letter when booted into XP for
the partition where Windows is installed is D, you don't want to change
that. Doing so will mean that pretty much every installed program and
Windows will cease to function because it is looking for everything on D
rather than C. Additionally your XP boot files are on your C drive so if
you format that you will no longer be able to boot into XP.

Your best option is to leave C where it is and D where it is. Delete the
directories and files off of C (make sure you leave the XP boot files) and
then use C as extra storage.
--
Tom Porterfield
MS-MVP Smart Display
http://support.telop.org

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup only.
 
If you delete the Win 98 files, you will have to remove Win 98 from
boot.ini.
--
Ron Sommer
---------------------------------
Go to Start/Run and type in: msconfig
Then go to the Boot.ini Tab and click on Check All Boot Paths. If you
receive a warning about a duplicate path: Do you want to remove, choose
yes.

Or...

Right click the My Computer icon/Properties/Advanced/Startup and
Recovery/Settings/System Startup/Edit.

How to Edit the BOOT.INI File in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q289/0/22.asp

--
All the Best,
Kelly

MS-MVP Win98/XP
[AE-Windows® XP]
----------------------------------
 
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