Remove XP from a dual boot with Vista Ultimate

I recently built a new PC with a Asus P5N-E SLI MOBO and have been running it
with XP Pro for the last few months on my PATA Primary Master Drive.
I just got my copy of Vista Ultimate and have decided to run that on an SATA
Raid comprised of 2 - 300 gig SATA2 drives striped to give me a total drive
of 550gig (give or take)

Everything seems to be working fine. On boot I get the Vista Boot controller
asking if i would like to run Vista or 'an older version of windows'
everything works great.
Depending on which OS I'm using, THAT is the drive the OS sees as my C:

Once I decide that all is running fine and I want to delete XP (or free it
up for another PC) how do i get rid of XP and not mess up my boot? Currenly
if I hide my XP drive (by turning off my primary IDE channel in bios)I get an
error that there was a boot error and there are no bootable drives. I haven't
tried just unplugging the XP drive to see if that gets a different effect.
Basically right now I'm just testing to see that Vista boots fine by itself
from my RAID with no other OS installed.

Main question is how to get rid of XP and restore Boot to Vista drive.

In a dual boot setup,Vista installs files on the drive containing XP - in
particulate a hidden folder titled "Boot" which contains BCDStore data - the
XP boot.ini file presents the boot menu - if you select Vista to boot
control is transferred to the Vista boot loader "BCDStore".

You cannot simply delete/remove/reformat the XP drive (Normal C) - Vista
will not boot doing so!

Some options: 1. Delete all files on XP drive except for the folder titled
Boot, Boot.ini and other XP boot files (Names escape me) - shrink drive to
minimum necessary - use unallocated space to extend Vista drive or use as
data store.
2. "Read up"on using command line BCDedit utility or use a third party boot
manager such as Vistapro to make the Vista drive bootable.
3. The "drastic" measure - reformat and reinstall Vista - would require
phone activation
4. Let things be.

It goes without saying "BACKUP" beforehand.

Buckey wrote:
> I recently built a new PC with a Asus P5N-E SLI MOBO and have been running it
> with XP Pro for the last few months on my PATA Primary Master Drive.
> I just got my copy of Vista Ultimate and have decided to run that on an SATA
> Raid comprised of 2 - 300 gig SATA2 drives striped to give me a total drive
> of 550gig (give or take)
>
> Everything seems to be working fine. On boot I get the Vista Boot controller
> asking if i would like to run Vista or 'an older version of windows'
> everything works great.
> Depending on which OS I'm using, THAT is the drive the OS sees as my C:
>
> Once I decide that all is running fine and I want to delete XP (or free it
> up for another PC) how do i get rid of XP and not mess up my boot? Currenly
> if I hide my XP drive (by turning off my primary IDE channel in bios)I get an
> error that there was a boot error and there are no bootable drives. I haven't
> tried just unplugging the XP drive to see if that gets a different effect.
> Basically right now I'm just testing to see that Vista boots fine by itself
> from my RAID with no other OS installed.
>
> Main question is how to get rid of XP and restore Boot to Vista drive.

http://www.pro-networks.org/vistabootpro/

Hopefully your RAID partition is a primary partition. Make it active. Then
with the PATA disconnected or the RAID drive first in HD boot priority,
using your install DVD, do a start-up repair. You may have to do it more
than once.


"Buckey" <Buckey@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:CF6E45F3-300C-4D62-8D8E-B8F3EB7D0332@microsoft.com...
>I recently built a new PC with a Asus P5N-E SLI MOBO and have been running
>it
> with XP Pro for the last few months on my PATA Primary Master Drive.
> I just got my copy of Vista Ultimate and have decided to run that on an
> SATA
> Raid comprised of 2 - 300 gig SATA2 drives striped to give me a total
> drive
> of 550gig (give or take)
>
> Everything seems to be working fine. On boot I get the Vista Boot
> controller
> asking if i would like to run Vista or 'an older version of windows'
> everything works great.
> Depending on which OS I'm using, THAT is the drive the OS sees as my C:
>
> Once I decide that all is running fine and I want to delete XP (or free it
> up for another PC) how do i get rid of XP and not mess up my boot?
> Currenly
> if I hide my XP drive (by turning off my primary IDE channel in bios)I get
> an
> error that there was a boot error and there are no bootable drives. I
> haven't
> tried just unplugging the XP drive to see if that gets a different effect.
> Basically right now I'm just testing to see that Vista boots fine by
> itself
> from my RAID with no other OS installed.
>
> Main question is how to get rid of XP and restore Boot to Vista drive.