partitioning in XP Pro

Ok, so after my XP home installation died, i installed XP Pro on my other (previously Mandrake) partition. Now I want to re-format my old (XP home) partition and use it for data. Unfortunatley, since it still has XP Home (unbootable) on it, and still lists it in the M$ boot loader, i cant reformat (says its a system drive, and a primary partition)

I've now got a new partition (f:/) with XP Pro running (stable) on it.

What I want to do is format the other partition, but it wont let me. Is there any way to uninstall or unregister the old XP Home installation?

 

Are you trying to repartition and format the XP Home partition using the DIsk Administrator tool in XP pro?? And were you set up for dual booting? Now that I think of it, the first partition would have the master. Partition Magic might be the best bet

 

ok, let me elabourate a little.. i didnt explain myself too clearly.

Ive got 2 partitions, F: which has the XP Pro installation on it, and C: which has the (dead) XP Home installation on it. However, when i did the setup for XP pro it presumed i still wanted to boot the dead partition, and so i get a dual boot screen. What i want to do is get rid of the old partition with XP Home on it. or at least stop it from trying to boot from it.

Ive tried to format it with disk management administration console, but it wont let me (option is disabled) I'd like to use NTFS on that partition.

Ive got PM and will use that..

 

Be careful formating the C drive because it has the boot files for your stable running copy of XP Pro. That is most likely the reason you could not format it from XP Pro. The boot files are hidden system files namely NTLDR(no ext.), bootsect.dos, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini they must be in the root directory of the first partition (primary active boot) of the first hard disk drive namely drive C: . Your copy of XP on drive F: doesn't have these files therefore is not bootable if moved to C: . You can copy the files from C: to F: before you copy your F partition to C partition or you can do a repair install of XP after you move it to replace the missing boot files.

BTW what happened to D: and E:

If you just don't want to have the boot menu you can right click "My computer", click on "Properties" select the advanced tab, in the startup and recovery box click on settings, in the system startup box choose "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" / fastdetect as the default operating system from the pull down list, uncheck "Time to display list of operating systems" click OK. The next time you boot it will boot right to Win XP Pro without displaying the boot menu.


Caution: be absolutely sure "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" / fastdetect is the default OS before you uncheck "Time to display list of operating systems" because if XP Home is default and it will not boot you will need to repair boot.ini before you will be able to boot to XP Pro

This procedure is also good for a ME - XP duel boot system when the user no longer uses ME and doesn't want the boot menu slowing down the boot process.

 

I have to agree strongly with M A. Partition Magic. Save your pennies Goldy and buy it. No geek should be without it. Without sounding like a PM salesman, I will say it's the most impressive software I've ever used. Simple to use too.

 

hmm, i was afraid of that. I want to be able to have the files needed for boot to be on F, but F isnt the primary partition... so youre saying i have to do a repair or copy them across? how? and cant i just put the bootloader in the MBR so i dont have to use the primary partition?

 

After you copy the required files from C: to F: and copy F partition to C you can run the recovery console from your XP Pro CD using the "fixmbr" and "fixboot" commands to repair the master boot record and write a new boot sector to C: drive.

Could you open boot.ini in notepad copy and paste its contents in a post you may need to edit it.

 

Ok, on drive C, ive got the following boot.ini

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Ok, so youre suggesting that I format C, then copy whats on F over to C, thus having the XP Pro (which is currently on F) on C? Isnt that a bit dodgey as registry entries will be wrong all over the shop, since they're referring to F:/ instead of C:/ ? Or would that be what the repair was for?

(BTW, D and E are my CD drives... )

incidentally, how am i going to copy F over to C, as i wont be able to boot into windows after ive formatted C:, or will i do that from the recovery console too?