Dual boot removal of OS

[Thor357]

Ok I have a 250 Gig drive that shares Windows XP and Fedora 12. I am going to a dual Hard drive with removable tray, so I need to remove Fedora 12 and make the drive 100% windows XP again.

I am starting a New Fedora install on it's own drive.

Also does anyone understand that Pesky Windows Media Center, where it always tells me when I try to update to XP Pro that my Key code is invalid? It is a good key code I have two new XP Pro disks and both say this...

Back to the dual boot, how can I turn it back to windows XP only and not corrupt the existing XP NTFS system?


Thank You in advance!

[stoat]

Originally Posted by Thor357

Back to the dual boot, how can I turn it back to windows XP only...

Hello Thor357,

I would delete the Fedora partitions and use a partition manager to resize the XP partition. You may have to repair the XP boot loader. For example, GRUB is commonly installed in the master boot record in these situations. You may find that you need to restore the master boot record. Another boot loader complication can occur if partitions are deleted "in front of" the XP partition. That can happen if the XP partition is not the first partition. For that, you may find that you need to edit the boot.ini file. And lastly, Anaconda for Fedoras 11 & 12 changes the active partition to the Fedora boot partition. You may find that you need to change that back to the XP partition. Your partition manager can do that job, too.

Originally Posted by Thor357

...and not corrupt the existing XP NTFS system?

I don't think anyone in their right mind would promise that. Partition manipulation is somewhat risky business. Deleting the Fedora partitions and resizing XP's is normal partition manager business. But if the XP system is important, then I would image it to an alternate medium (say, a DVD) before manipulating the partitions on this hard drive.

[jan73]

Using Windows XP:
Put in the CD player your XP cd and continue just as you would install windows..
Read carefully the installation procedure, as you dont want to reinstall windows but want to get into the recovery console.
Instead of installing windows, enter into "Recovery Console" by pressing "R", select your Windows installation and enter administrator password. Now provide following command:

fixmbr

Press "Y" to confirm and type Exit to exit from recovery console.

fixmbr will 'fix the master boot record and overwrite any loader you had from linux'.

You can then safely reboot into windows.. no bootloader present anymore .. delete any linux partition from within windows if you desire.