Removing an operating system

[XP Idiot]

Instead of an upgrade installation I inadvertantly
installed a fresh copy of XP on the same physical disk and
on the same partition as Win 2000 Pro. Now on my system
I've got C:\WINNT and C:\WINDOWS. Boot.ini resides in C:
\WINDOWS as does windir. Can I SAFELY eliminate C:\WINNT as
this was, I hope, the the folder that contained the boot
files prior to the XP install? If so, what's the best way?
Thanks in advance.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Instead of an upgrade installation I inadvertantly
installed a fresh copy of XP on the same physical disk and
on the same partition as Win 2000 Pro. Now on my system
I've got C:\WINNT and C:\WINDOWS. Boot.ini resides in C:
\WINDOWS as does windir. Can I SAFELY eliminate C:\WINNT as
this was, I hope, the the folder that contained the boot
files prior to the XP install?

Edit boot.ini and check in the [operating systems] for the lines for
each - something like
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP etc
If the one for NT has \WINNT you should be able to delete that line and
the corresponding one in [boot loader] and then delete the WINNT folder.
Just to be *quite* sure I would delete the lines and then start by
*renaming* WINNT - it is though very unlikely that it is in any use by
XP