Vista in dual boot mode question

[grgreen]

Hey guys. I've got a 120 GB HDD w/ 2 equal partitinos. I have XP and all data on the C: drive. D: drive is empty. I want to install Vista on the D: drive in a dual boot scenario. I need to keep XP. I mainly want to just check Vista out and see how it runs.

However, what if I should want to get rid of Vista? Normally you can't delete the system partition, but can you ifyou are not currently running the system.

Example, if i wanted to delete the partition with Vista, I couldn't do it while running Vista. But if I was funning XP on a sperate partiton could I then delete the Vista System partition using Disk Management?

Mainly, I want to have the option of getting rid of Vista without having to reinstall XP over everything.

Thanks!

[Ancient Dragon]

If you have XP on C: and Vista on D: then you don't have to reinstall anything. Just boot up on XP and reformat the d drive. The only problem I see with that is that you will still have the duel-boot menu. You need to edit the boot.ini file found in c:\ root directory. Here's the one on my computer
;
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[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 Professional" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN

Not certain what you have to do to that file to remove the Vista option, but whatever you do make sure you have another copy of boot.ini before editing it.

[grgreen]

Perfect! That's what I was thinking but wanted the confirmation. Thanks a lot!

[willcomp]

The Vista boot loader will install on the XP partition (current boot partition) and will replace boot.ini as boot loader. It will remain after Vista is removed.

I highly recommend installing VistaBootPro in XP to easily edit Vista boot options. It runs in either XP or Vista.

http://www.vistabootpro.org/