Dual boot situation

[cdb252]

I have a dual boot setup on two HD's - Win XP Pro (60 gb hd) Master, - Linux Redhat 7.3 (40 gb hd) Slave. I want to go back to just XP and use the 40 gb hd as a data drive for data created in XP.

How do I disable the dual boot option screen at bootup? And how do I get XP to recognize the 40 gb HD after removing Linux?

I went to Administrative tools, Computer Management and Disk Management and it shows the 40 gb with three partitions and it would appear that I can delete those partitions. But would XP then recognize that drive in My Computer? (it doesn't now).

Could I then format NTSF file system on it. And, that brings me back to, how do I get the dual boot screen from coming up. I looked in the boot.ini file and compared it to my other computer and it is the same syntax.

Any help would be appreciated

[Play_The_0dds]

you can delete the partitions, and create new ones, or just format those in fat or ntfs so windows will see them. as for xp still booting,
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...003/08/4/86345
that link pretty much answers the questions without me having to type it.
if windows does not boot, just use the cd to repair. dont format, just repair/reinstall, and you wont loose your stuff.

[cdb252]

Thanks KC, you helped get me off high center. Here is what I did in case someone else may be interested:

I went to Disk Mgmt. and deleted partitions in Disk 1 (40 gb Linux). Then I booted from A:\ with a Win 98 start disk and ran fdisk /mbr. Then the computer booted normally into Win XP.

I then went back to Disk Mgmt. and right clicked on Disk 1 and selected options to make it a formatted partition. It assigned a drive letter F:\ and now appears in My Computer.

I would prefer it to be D:\ and my CD's to be E:\ and F:\ but XP doesn't seem as user friendly to make changes to removeable drive letters as I remember Win 98 was. I will struggle with this one........even a blind hog finds an accorn now and then!! LOL

Thanks again for your help......I visit this forum often and I see you offer a lot of help to folks, thanks for all you do.

Charlie....

[cdb252]

Here is a postscript to the foregoing:

I mentioned that I wanted to change the drive letter of the second hard drive (40 gb) from F:\ to D:\ but D:\ and E:\ were already in use by 2 CDROM drives. Windows XP was very clear on changing drive letters for fixed disks but nothing I could find on changing removable media drive letters.

What I did was unplug the ribbon cable from the two CD drives and reboot, and then changed the drive letter F:\ to D:\ and re-booted the machine. XP automatically assigned E:\ and F:\ then to the two CD's.

Pretty simple but ....oh well, learn something everyday.

Charlie

[ultrasolve]

Glad to see you got the problem sorted out cdb, but for future reference you didn't need to remove the CDROM drives to change the letters, all you needed to do was go into disk management and right click on the CD drive and choose the option to change drive letters and paths and click the remove button this would leave the drive with no assigned letter you then rename the hardisk with the letter you want, then assign the CD drives with a drive letter from the remainder that are left.

[cdb252]

Ultrasolve:

I feel rather dumb!! When I brought up Disk management it was in the minimized window and the only drives I saw were Disk 0 and Disk 1..........I didn't notice the slide bar on the right side to scroll down to the CD's.

Duh!! Well, what I did worked but it would have been easier your way, no doubt.

Thanks again and I will attempt to keep my head out of my butt in the future!!!!!

[Play_The_0dds]

glad i could help a little, just a small note on changing drive letters, the setup you have is fine, it is all new partitions and cdroms, if you change drive letters on drives with operating systems, programs, files, or anything on them it is best to use a program like partition magic that checks and changes the paths for the info on them, example,if a program is registered to C:\Program Files\Any Program and you change the drive letter from C to F it will have registry problems.

[cdb252]

I will heed your advice and I knew that could be a problem if it involved a drive with programs etc. but as you say my scenario only involved a new clean formatted drive, so - no prob.

I noticed that XP cautioned about that when I went to change the drive letter so thats cool.

I will make a note to myself about partion magic if I run into the need again involving progms. etc.

Thanks again

Charlie

[TheWapo]

I have a similar problem...
I lost my repair cd so I reloaded in the same directory as the old directory. Windows operates fine The problem is that I have all of my old programfile that either need reinstalling OR are not functional at all. Can I delete one of my versions of XP? Should I just delete these olddocument & program files? Any advice? Please be gentel :{

[cdb252]

Wapo, not sure I understand exactly what you are saying but I assume you re-installed the operating system on the same C:\ partition as a previous install? I normally delete all partitons when I re-format and install a fresh Op. sys. You can go to "Start" " Run" and type Msconfig that will bring up a window containing various things but Boot.ini tab will offer a check of the boot paths and give you the option to delete the old system boot. That will stop the screen that comes up following POST with the choice of which Windows install you want to boot from.

If you aren't too far along with the new install I would go back and re-install from scratch carefully removing all partitions and re-formatting. There may be other possibilities in Disk Management that one of the Guru's reading this could help you with that would be less drastic than my recommendation.

Good Luck !!

[TheWapo]

My thinking was that "reloading" would fix the various problems that I had from malware & running hijack this. When I ran HJ this I think I deleted some things that I should not have. Consequently I was unable to get online, etc... & I thought I could just "plug holes" by doing it this way. If I have to nuke it then I will...

[cdb252]

"Nuking" is the sure way to eliminate malware albeit extreme. Short of nuking I like the following (mostly free) utilities that I keep updated and run regularly to keep malware off my machine: Spybot, Adaware, CWshredder, CCleaner, Registry Mechanic, Pest Patrol, Spywareblaster, Spywareguard. and AVG free for antivirus and Sunbelt Kerio firewall.

I think from what you have posted you should probably bite the bullet and do the whole enchilada with delete, reformat, and re-install. Then update windows to present and install the utilities I list above or go with recommendations from other reputable folks. Be careful, some of the spyware programs out there sound good but in reality they are spyware.

I hope this helps or someone else sharper than me will jump in and help you.

Charlie

[TheWapo]

Thanks Charlie!

I tried to run my AV, & Malware software, but it must have been disabled because none of this type of programming would launch.

--Jeff--