Erasing Vista's physical drive

[DaveJ]

Old topic, I know. I have an old PC that I tried the Vista beta on a good while back. I loaded Vista on the secondary drive. At least, I think it's the secondary drive. I will double check after I'm finished writing.

Now I can't erase the HD using Windows XP's format utility.

It's been booting up to XP for the past year or so, but I would like my to use the secondary drive again! (Started using Tivo to record a lot of video)

I understand (I guess) that the dual boot functionality was somehow created when I did the Vista install, and that they say one needs the Vista CD in order to get rid of it. But I don't have the Vista CD anymore....

Is there any way to get rid of Vista (and the dual booter) without the Vista CD?

Edit: Yes, I double checked and Vista is on the secondary HD. I don't understand why I can't erase it.

[trotsky]

1. Were you just trying to reformat,

or did you go into Disk Management to delete the partition?

[DaveJ]

2. Regular disk format.

I don't think of it as a partition since it is acutally my 2nd HD inside the case. I also tried disabling it in the BIOS and then the computer would not boot up, and said there was no boot device.

I don't understand. Why would the computer need a boot device on the secondary drive?

[trotsky]

3. Simplest config means the 2nd disk has its own lone partition.

To get rid of it you should delete that partition thru Disk Management (right-click "My Computer", select Manage, find Disk Management on the left side).... BUT the error you got trying to boot with the 2nd drive disabled tells me that maybe it's not really the 2nd drive but the primary one? Can you specify to your BIOS *which* drive you want to boot from?

Is this SATA or IDE?

[DaveJ]

5. I am still conused

They are IDE drives. I haven't actually looked at the jumpers, but the BIOS does appear to indicate it was supposed to boot from the XP drive.

I then used a program called VistaBootPro to get rid of Vista in the boot utility. Now, I have no boot options upon startup, and it goes straight to the XP drive, but it still will not boot if I remove the seconday drive from the BIOS. I'm fairly positive the secondary drive is the Vista drive. I may have to start taking drives out...

[trotsky]

7. Double check those jumpers.

Make sure the XP drive is the primary master. Check your BIOS to see which drive is the boot device - some let you specify which of the IDE devices you boot from. Your BOOT.INI file below looks good for booting direct from the XP drive so if it is indeed set as the boot device it should work.

[DaveJ]

9. No jumpers, but all is well now

Anyway I took the Vista drive out and it boots up, so it looks like it's okay to format the Vista drive. I had to delete and recreate the partition since it wouldn't let me do a regular format. I wonder why files were in use? So I deleted the partition and recreated it, now it's doing a quick format.

It's nice to have the extra space.

I have no idea why it wasn't working with my BIOS changes. Too much for me to think about.

Thanks very much for your help!

[CK_John]

4. Before you erase the drive, you have to change the dual boot or you may lose both. Boot.ini on the

XP drive should be modified first, then insure XP will bootup.

Now you should be able to remove Vista drive through manage option of MyComputer.

Here is a copy of c:\boot.ini of a 2 partition XP drive for comparision.

----------------------------------------------------
*boot loader*
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
*operating systems*
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
-----------------------------------------------------

Note: in lines 1 and 3 the * is used in place of left and right brackets due to DU uses brackets in place of < >. Also line 4 should be a single line.

[DaveJ]

6. Here's my boot.ini

After removing Vista from the boot loader:

{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


As I said above, it boots straight to XP now, but I still get a "No OS Error" when I disable the secondary drive, so I'm afraid to erase it.

[CK_John]

8. The MBR has be updated. I use an WinME bootdisk and boot from a floppy and run

fdisk /MBR. You may have to change the boot order in BIOS. Not sure what you mean by disable, but I would leave the other drive alone except change the pins to slave and see if XP can see the drive as just a data drive.

Link for bootdisk
<http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm>

I would still virus scan it to be sure.
You may have to format a floppy with create a MS=DOS disk checked with XP first.

Clone your XP disk first if possible or at least use system restore and create a restore points.

The boot.ini looks ok.

[DaveJ]

10. I don't have any floppies, but It's better now

Turns out, it was okay to reformat the Vista drive with no repercussions. Mow it's a data drive. (I thought I could disable it in the BIOS but apparently not. So I tested by taking the Vista drive out and it turned out I was good to go.)

Now, I'm just wondering why XP hangs for about 30 seconds on a black screen before the startup screen with the progress bar appears. I'm thinking it's probably looking for some missing Vista files for some reason. No big deal though....

Thanks for your help.

[CK_John]

11. Remove the timeout = 30 from the boot.ini, that was to give you a choice of which OS to boot before

going with the default.

[DaveJ]

12. That makes sense...

I never would have thought to look there again. Thanks again!