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General discussion

Removing XP After Vista

Aug 25, 2007 4:08AM PDT

I had Windows XP Media Center Installed and I then Installed Vista alongside it so that I could slowly migrate to it. I am now fully up and running in Vista and XP is just taking up valuable disk space. The Problem is I cant seem to format the partition that XP is on, because it is an "Active and Primary" Partion. I have enclosed a screenshot of the disk management console. So is there a way of removing XP and leaving Vista running all okay?

http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/1051/diskjy6.jpg


System Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 Mobile (S754)3200+
DFI LANPARTY UT NF3 250GB
Western Digital SATA 80GB
Nvidia 7600GS 512MBAGP
Dual Boot XP Media Center Edition and Windows Vista Ultimate

Discussion is locked

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Removing XP
Aug 25, 2007 9:27AM PDT

First you need to edit the boot file so that Vista is the only option, you can download VistaBootPRO_3.3.0 to make it easier.
You can't format XP partition because Vista has system files on it, but you can delete the files on that partition. Make sure you have all your data files backed up to the Vista partition, then select all files on XP partition and delete all. Vista will not allow you to delete any files that it needs.
Or you could move your data files & folders from XP to a new folder created on XP partition and select all except the new folder to delete.

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Partition Still Remains
Aug 25, 2007 10:49PM PDT

That worked for me no problems, thank you for that.

Is there however a way to totally remove the second partition that XP used to reside on and merge the free space with the vista partition?

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Unlikely.
Aug 25, 2007 11:06PM PDT

This is the same issue that dual boot 98/xp owners faced. After removing their 98 partition they would find a non-booting system. To fix this they had to perform the usual XP REPAIR INSTALL. If you remove the partition and find a non-booting system you need to research VISTA REPAIR INSTALL on google.com

You can imagine that I no longer advise to dual boot Windows versions.

As to resizing partitions, it's only slightly dangerous with the latest version of Partition Magic. But PM is also incapable of resolving the boot failure if you remove XP.

Bob