Formatting OS

[ritish]

Friends,
I have installed two operating systems in two different partioned drives.
I need to uninstall the operating system that is next to my logical operating system. How would I do that without affecting my main operating system.
The formatting should be such that during start up the second operating system does not show up.

[Third Eye]

Tell us in detail....
means what are the name of Windows? and which you don't wanna delete?

[ritish]

Ok
in drive C i have XP SP2(older)
in drive D: i have Vista Ultimate(new)
I want to format Vista Ultimate without hampering XP SP2

[ranjan2001]

just format D drive & thats all.

[47shailesh]

Originally Posted by ranjan2001

just format D drive & thats all.

By Doing this he will loose his MBR also and will unbale to boot into XP

so required is format then.... How to fix the MBR...

after formating Vista drive.. Use ur XP disk to Boot then go to Recovery console..

if you have an administrator password then use it else leave blank

then type following:

bootcfg /rebuild
fixboot
fixmbr

This would solve ur prob...
__________
Alternatively if my first option does'nt help you ou can go for this one

First you must reboot the system from your xp cdrom.
Then when prompted select the option to enter the recovery console. Select the installation to be repaired followed by the administrator password.
Type Fixboot and answer yes to the prompt.
Then type in the following commands and leave all spaces eactly as they appear here.
CD \
ATTRIB -H NTLDR
ATTRIB -S NTLDR
ATTRIB -R NTLDR
ATTRIB -H NTDETECT.COM
ATTRIB -S NTDETECT.COM
ATTRIB -R NTDETECT.COM
COPY X:\I386\NTLDR C:\ ( X IS THE LETTER OF YOUR CDROM )
COPY X:\I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\ ( X IS THE LETTER OF YOUR CDROM )
Afterwards reboot

[ranjan2001]

Oh I was not aware of this, what is MBR?
I always though that format will only affect that partition only not any thing else..............need to learn a lot.
I am also thinking of trying to test drive Vista by installing it on D drive but now I know getting rid of that after 30 days is not easy.
Thanks for telling those details.

[47shailesh]

@ranjan2001 it depends what ur action will disturb ur MBR

in same case if ritish has to remove XP not vista then only a format of XP wud be enough followed by removing XP entry in BOOT file of vista coz this time boot loader was of vista and u had not touched it... so format will do...

But in case above what ritish has asked for you r formatting Vista and with it the MasterBootRecord will also be lost so u have to again create it to get XP running
Got it

[ranjan2001]

Ok understood now
Thanks

[ritish]

Thanks shailesh for ur mentorship.
Let me try out ur sayings...
Thanks again in advance..

[khattam_]

Originally Posted by 47shailesh

By Doing this he will loose his MBR also and will unbale to boot into XP

so required is format then.... How to fix the MBR...

after formating Vista drive.. Use ur XP disk to Boot then go to Recovery console..

if you have an administrator password then use it else leave blank

then type following:

bootcfg /rebuild
fixboot
fixmbr

This would solve ur prob...
__________
Alternatively if my first option does'nt help you ou can go for this one

First you must reboot the system from your xp cdrom.
Then when prompted select the option to enter the recovery console. Select the installation to be repaired followed by the administrator password.
Type Fixboot and answer yes to the prompt.
Then type in the following commands and leave all spaces eactly as they appear here.
CD \
ATTRIB -H NTLDR
ATTRIB -S NTLDR
ATTRIB -R NTLDR
ATTRIB -H NTDETECT.COM
ATTRIB -S NTDETECT.COM
ATTRIB -R NTDETECT.COM
COPY X:\I386\NTLDR C:\ ( X IS THE LETTER OF YOUR CDROM )
COPY X:\I386\NTDETECT.COM C:\ ( X IS THE LETTER OF YOUR CDROM )
Afterwards reboot

As XP is in C:, formatting D: should do, and it should not hamper Bootsector or MBR as it is in C:.

After formatting D:, the only trace of Vista will be in hidden system file c:\boot.ini. So to edit it open XP, just do Start>Run>c:\boot.ini and delete make it look like the following:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

And save it. Thats it...

[ranjan2001]

Thats what I thought so but I am not so knowledgeable so dont know for sure,great if it does by formatting the D drive.