Removing a second OS

I have a rather complex problem. On my computer I have two OS installed. Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Professional Media Center Edition. I want to remove the media center edition but am have some problems doing so because for some reason when the media edition OS installed it was installed on a separate partitioned section of my C drive. Now I can find no way of removing this OS while keeping my original Home edition. Please help.

 

That's the way it should have been done, otherwise it wouldn't have worked.

By your description, Home is on partition C, Media Center is on what partition - D?

To get rid of Media Center: boot into Home, right click on My Computer > Manage. At that point you should see the partitions. Right click on Media Center's partition > format. That will clear everything on that partition, including any user data that you have there, so be sure to move any to the Home's (C) partition before doing this.

Next you have to fix the boot.ini file. Shutdown and re-start with the XP cd in the ROM - this is assuming that the primary boot device is the cd rom. You should see a number of options, the one you want is "To repair windows using the Recovery Console" and enter the installation # - 1. If you do not see this and instead see "To Cancel the current upgrade and install a new version of Microsoft Windows, press F10 ", press F10 and then you'll see the RC option.

The command to enter at the blinking cursor: Bootcfg - Automatically scans all local disks for Windows installations and configures and repairs entries in the operating system menu (Boot.ini). That should get rid of the dual boot menu and the system should now boot into Home on C.

If any of my assumptions, such as the way the partitions are set up or having a XP cd is not true, post back.

Regards - Charles

 

Charles,

I have two hard drives, a C drive and D drive. Windows home edition is on my C drive, but media center edition is on a separate partition that is neither C nor D. When I boot in media edition, the partitions are as follows:

C: media edtiion
D:
E: home edition

The E drive in this case is my old C drive that has all of my old files, and the D drive is also unchanged but this new C drive is a 5MB partitioned section that contains the media center files. I want to remove this operating system, but I cannot remove it while media center is booted, and I cannot view or format this section while the home edtion is booted. Is there some alternate way to access this volume?

Thanks
Nick

 

Hi Nick,

boot into Home, right click on My Computer > Manage
When I wrote this, I left out: > under Storage > Disk Management.

I hope that's why you're not seeing partition C because I can't think of a reason for not being able to while booted into Home.

Lets see if I have your partition/drive setup straight.

C Drive: partition C is Media Center
C Drive: partition E is XP Home.
D Drive: data drive/partition.

Regards - Charles