Uninstalling Windows XP Home

[Ugly Trick]

I want to uninstall Windows XP Home from a computer that I have. I can not
get it to uninstall or format the drive. It does not show up in Add/Remove
Programs in Control Panel. Help!

Ugly Trick

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You cannot uninstall Windows. You can format the drive, but not from within
Windows itself. What you can do is insert your XP cd and boot the computer
with it and proceed as though you were installing Windows afresh. When you
reach the screen that lets you select your hard drive partition you can
delete the existing partition, create a new one, and then format that.

 

[Daave]

I want to uninstall Windows XP Home from a computer that I have.

If you mean you want to remove the OS from your hard drive, what is your
reason? Is it a Retail copy you wish to install on another machine?
Details, please!

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I want to uninstall Windows XP Home from a computer that I have. I can not
get it to uninstall or format the drive. It does not show up in Add/Remove
Programs in Control Panel. Help!

Ugly Trick

The normal way to "uninstall" *any* operating system is to format
the hard drive and install a new OS of your choice.

Only if you performed an upgrade from Win98/Me, elected to backup
the old system files, and didn't convert the partition to NTFS, can
you then boot into Safe Mode and click Start > Control Panel

Add/Remove Programs. All of these conditions must be met for the

uninstall option to be available.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/555375

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safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ~Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. ~Bertrand Russell

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has
killed a great many philosophers.
~ Denis Diderot

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I want to uninstall Windows XP Home from a computer that I have. I can not
get it to uninstall or format the drive. It does not show up in Add/Remove
Programs in Control Panel. Help!

As a general rule, you can't uninstall an operating system. You have
to reformat the drive and install another operating system cleanly.

There's an exception to that, however. If you did an upgrade from
Windows 98 or Me, and took the option to save the previous operating
system and also did not convert your drive to NTFS, then you can find
an entry in Add/Remove Programs. Clicking on that will uninstall
Windows XP and revert to the previous operating system.

If there's no entry in Add/Remove Programs, then one or more of those
conditions wasn't met, and your only choice is to reformat and install
whatever operating system you want cleanly.

You can't format the Windows drive from within Windows, since that
would leave Windows without a leg to stand on.

Just boot from the Windows XP CD (change the BIOS boot order if
necessary to accomplish this) and follow the prompts for a clean
installation (delete the existing partition by pressing "D" when
prompted, then create a new one).

You can find detailed instructions here:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

or here
http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_install_windows_xp.htm

or here http://windowsxp.mvps.org/XPClean.htm

or here http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm