How Do I Uninstall an Operating System????

rocksolid

I have 2 operating systems installed on my laptop Windows XP Home Edition and XP Pro. Im wondering how do i uninstall XP Pro as i dont use it anymore and want to free up some space on my harddrive???

Any help would be appreciated???

Sherifu

You need to boot into the one you want to keep - XP home, then go into disk management and delete the xp pro partition, you can then use the free space where xp pro was. *YOU WILL LOSE ALL THE DATA ON THE XP PRO PARTITION*

rocksolid

cheers thanks, where do i find disk management???

Sherifu

Start> Run> diskmgmt.msc> enter

You should also edit the boot.ini file to remove the xp rpo entry. You could leave the xp pro files there but if you want to reclaim the space then do as in my first post. Just take your time and make sure you pick the right partition.

rocksolid

im in disk management but i dont tink my C Drive is partitioned, can you shed any light on this????

Sherifu

Then they could be installed on the same partition. On c:\ do you have 2 windows folders?

e.g.
c:\windows
c:\windows1

rocksolid

yea i do have 2 window folders on the c drive, XP Pro is under the name Windows2, i cant just right click the folder and delete it, it wont let me???

Sherifu

A live cd would be best for this operation. I'd recommend Bart PE. Download, burn to cd, boot off it and delete windows2 folder.

rocksolid

What is a live cd, what does it do????

Sherifu

It's like an operating system on a cd, a very small limited one. It runs on the computer's ram instead of hard drive. It'll present you with a windows like desktop and some basic tools.

Basically if you try to delete the windows2 directory from xp home you'll run into permission problems, the live cd should bypass that.

rocksolid

ok ill give it a try and let you know how i get on

Sherifu

Good luck.

rocksolid

il have downloaded Bart Pe now, do i run it now and install on the laptop or wat do i do

Sherifu

It's an iso file? right? Burn it to a cd with your cd burning software, then restart with the cd in the drive.

rocksolid

all i have done is downloaded the files from the net which is an .exe file, wat next???

Sherifu

Ah they changed it, it used to be a nice easy iso
Here are the steps.

# Make sure that your system has about 500MB of free disk space!

# Download the latest PE Builder version (self-installing package) and install it.

# Start PE Builder (pebuilder.exe). When you start PE Builder for the first time it will ask if you agree with the license agreement.

# Now PE Builder will ask to search for windows installation files. If you don't have your windows XP setup/installation files on your system you must insert the original Microsoft Windows XP installation/setup CD at this point.
The files you have at c:\windows are not installation files. They are your already installed files!
Click "yes" to start searching. PE Builder will now search all fixed- and CD-Rom drives for Windows installation files. This will take some time. When more than one valid location is found, a dialog will appear where you can select which location you want to use.

# At the main PE Builder dialog, select the "Burn to CD/DVD" option. When you are using an erasable medium, make sure that the "AutoErase RW" option is enabled. The "burn using" option should be set to "StarBurn". Select your CD writer device from the Device list.

# Hit the "build" button. PE Builder will now ask you to create a BartPE directory, answer with "yes".

# The license for your Microsoft Windows XP product is shown. Read it and agree to it to continue.

# PE Builder will now start building BartPE. This will take a few minutes.
You will see a lot of files getting copied and/or decompressed, the ISO image build and the data recorded to your CD/DVD writer.
If the data verify was correct and there where no errors reported you can boot the CD/DVD!