Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

How to get rid of all Windows xp files on a hard drive?

Sep 21, 2012 7:31AM PDT

I have a dell about 2004 vintage, with xp on it. Two drives, one, lets call it C drive, with xp working well. The other with a corrupt xp file somewhere that refuses to boot, lets call it drive F. I am not able to identify the corrupt file. (I am not an expert...)

Drive C works and boots fine... So I would like to get rid of all the operating system files on drive F. Is it better or easier to do this task from a C drive Windows xp boot, or a Ubunto Boot from a flash drive?

Either way, how can I be assured to find all the xp files that are now of no use?

All drives and hardware appear to be working well... i purposely put the xp OS on each drive a few years ago so as to make it possible top switch drives when the startup drive OS got messed up... which with Windows seems to happen sooner or later, right?

My plan is to eventually put XP back on the F drive for the same reason, IF I can do so without having to reformat the whole drive and loose data. (Backup is done as far as I can tell... but frankly, I don't trust a backup program to properly do so without losing data... and would prefer not to risk it... ). My backups were done by me manually...

I have purchased a used windows seven system and may put the F drive in that as a secondary drive in order to access the old files I have on F drive... rather than do a file transfer to the new computer system. To my way of thinking it would be smart to get rid of any old OS files on that F drive... before installing it.


Thanks,

M.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Isn't this a bit easy?
Sep 21, 2012 7:34AM PDT

I mean on drive F you delete the F:\Windows folder and it's gone. Done. You may have to deal with the boot.ini but that's just a google away.
Bob

- Collapse -
Answer
You have a backup of the drive in question, or not?
Sep 22, 2012 6:12AM PDT

IF you do, just do a full format on that drive and write a copy of your data back to that drive. Or if you don't have a backup, make a backup and then full format and write a copy of your data back to that drive.

One caveat; this is not a dual boot system right? Its two single boot drives you have to either switch boot priorities or the data cable to change it to the boot drive right? If its the former, don't delete or format until you have it working as a single boot system and the boot files are on the working XP drive.