2 installations of Windows, how do i remove one?

barringtoast · 27 Feb 2007 at 16:11

Hi,

I've just built a new PC, but I was a little impatient in waiting for my new SATA HDD to arrive, so i used up one of my 2 IDE slots on the motherboard and installed XP onto my old 30Gig IDE HDD.

Only thing is that now my SATA HDD has arrived and I really need both my IDE slots for my 2 DVD Writers.

So i installed the SATA drive and loaded XP onto it and now i get an option of which XP to boot up, but now i need to be able to remove the old IDE Drive in order to fit my second DVD Writer.

How do i go about doing this? i mean, is it just a case of taking it out?
is there a proper way to remove the "Which XP?" boot up option or will just taking out the hdd work fine?

Cheers in advance.

Craig321 · 27 Feb 2007 at 16:13

You might just be able to remove the hard drive, then when you boot up go into Start>Run>msconfig. Under boot.ini click "Check All Boot Paths", it should remove the invalid ones

barringtoast · 27 Feb 2007 at 16:55

cheers, i'll try that now, ill let you know how it goes

barringtoast · 27 Feb 2007 at 18:06

nope, that didn't work

i opened up the pc and unplugged the ide drive.

all i got upon boot up then was "boot error, insert system disk and press enter"

i'm desperate for help now

sirlemonhead · 27 Feb 2007 at 18:32

Hook up the drive with your Windows install on it, and boot up the pc with the Windows disc in and run the repair console. Try the "fixboot" command.

Then just manually clear windows off the other drive when you put it back in (Remove windows folder, my documents and hidden files in root such as ntldr, boot.ini etc)

barringtoast · 27 Feb 2007 at 19:08

ta, i'll give that a go and let you know.

Talbs13 · 27 Feb 2007 at 19:37

Why dont you just manually edit the Boot.ini file and remove the unwanted windows installation.After all you is delete the WINDOWS files which belonged to the old one.

Dogoid · 27 Feb 2007 at 19:42

in my bios i have boot order and boot priority , if you have something similar to boot priority then select your sata drive as priority 1, as it may still be looking for your ide to boot from.