I wish to 'reinstall' Vista

Wife installed Vista, and it really went weird.

Instead of removing XP which was on C drive
It somehow flopped the drive letters so what was c: now is on D: and vice
versa.
so now it looks like both versions are still on the machine but the drive
info is confused.
It works, but very confusing.

So I've backed up to a outboard backup drive and also to DVD's all the stuff
I need to save.

So my question is:
How do I first reformat c and d, and THEN do a clean install of Vista
Premium on C: as it should be.

The issue is that the drive info is presently confused and I want to make
sure that is straightened out first. I know this because if I try to do a
Vista backup of D: which has all the saved files, it's really the Vista
program that gets backup and vice versa. Sort of 'good' twin and 'evil'
twin.

please and thank you.

Hi,

Sounds like she picked the wrong volume at setup. Vista will label the
volume it installs to as C: by default, and will relabel other system
volumes.

If you plan to format anyways (and lose all data currently on the drives),
then the easiest thing to do is boot to the install disk, and at the point
of setup where you choose the installation location, simply used the
advanced tools to delete the existing volumes. Create a new one from the
resulting free space and proceed with setup.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"FireBrick" <w9ol@billnjudy.com> wrote in message
news:OLmw%23WcdJHA.2400@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Wife installed Vista, and it really went weird.
>
> Instead of removing XP which was on C drive
> It somehow flopped the drive letters so what was c: now is on D: and vice
> versa.
> so now it looks like both versions are still on the machine but the drive
> info is confused.
> It works, but very confusing.
>
> So I've backed up to a outboard backup drive and also to DVD's all the
> stuff I need to save.
>
> So my question is:
> How do I first reformat c and d, and THEN do a clean install of Vista
> Premium on C: as it should be.
>
> The issue is that the drive info is presently confused and I want to make
> sure that is straightened out first. I know this because if I try to do a
> Vista backup of D: which has all the saved files, it's really the Vista
> program that gets backup and vice versa. Sort of 'good' twin and 'evil'
> twin.
>
> please and thank you.

Just to add to that Vista will save all your user-related files
(documents,music,pictures, etc) in a Windows.old folder once the
reinstall is complete. Data in any user folders will still be there
after the reinstall. All our music,picture and video files were
retained in the newly created Windows.old folder.

Charlie
"Rick Rogers" <rick@mvps.org> wrote in message
news:uvCk9eedJHA.4900@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Hi,
>
> Sounds like she picked the wrong volume at setup. Vista will label
> the volume it installs to as C: by default, and will relabel other
> system volumes.
>
> If you plan to format anyways (and lose all data currently on the
> drives), then the easiest thing to do is boot to the install disk,
> and at the point of setup where you choose the installation
> location, simply used the advanced tools to delete the existing
> volumes. Create a new one from the resulting free space and proceed
> with setup.
>
> --
> Best of Luck,
>
> Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
> http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
> Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
> My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
>
> "FireBrick" <w9ol@billnjudy.com> wrote in message
> news:OLmw%23WcdJHA.2400@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>> Wife installed Vista, and it really went weird.
>>
>> Instead of removing XP which was on C drive
>> It somehow flopped the drive letters so what was c: now is on D:
>> and vice versa.
>> so now it looks like both versions are still on the machine but
>> the drive info is confused.
>> It works, but very confusing.
>>
>> So I've backed up to a outboard backup drive and also to DVD's all
>> the stuff I need to save.
>>
>> So my question is:
>> How do I first reformat c and d, and THEN do a clean install of
>> Vista Premium on C: as it should be.
>>
>> The issue is that the drive info is presently confused and I want
>> to make sure that is straightened out first. I know this because
>> if I try to do a Vista backup of D: which has all the saved files,
>> it's really the Vista program that gets backup and vice versa.
>> Sort of 'good' twin and 'evil' twin.
>>
>> please and thank you.
>