Uninstall WinXP

I have Win98SE on my machine. Used Partition Magic to install WinXP on a partition and must have done something wrong. On the XP bootup screen I have "Microsoft Windows XP Setup" and "Windows 98 ". I repartitioned the drive to one C: partition and uninstalled Partition Magic. WinXP is gone. How do I get rid of the XP bootup screen.

 

Assuming that 98 will start OK, your easiest 'fix' will be to edit the c:\boot.ini file (hidden, read-only so you'll have to change that, modify, then set the attributes back), set 98 as the default startup OS, set the delay to zero, and you will never see any options again. It will just load 98 when you boot up.

Careful though. If you mess up the boot.ini file the system won't boot so good idea to save a copy of the one you have now to a floppy just in case.

 

Thanks a lot Newt. That did the trick. I have that in my personal tips now, in case I need it later. I may try partitioning and setup WinXP later, now that I know where to go if I get in trouble again. Thanks again.

 

Glad it worked for you.

Just to clarify, you are using some leftover XP files that were placed on your C: drive to start 98. No problem and the files aren't large but if you see some strange 'NT' things on C: leave them there.

boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com all need to stay on your system for this particular tweak to keep working. If you get rid of them, it is possible that 98 would just start as it should but I'm not at all sure that would happen so safer to do what is working now.

 

Newt
Do you have any idea what would happen in this case if you renamed the boot.ini etc. and then booted from a 98 boot disk and used fdisk /mbr? Just curious.

 

Zander - nope. I dunno.

May work fine. May ruin the system. If you have a test box, it would be worth a try. On a production system (or 'only' system) I'd be a little nervous to do it since things are working now.