Remove Vista from XP dual boot

[dreamliner77]

Well, I've had XP and RC2 dual booting with VistaBoot for a while now and have decided to nuke the Vista Partition. What do I need to do to restore the original XP bootloader?

 

[j79zlr]

http://www.vistabootpro.org/

Lets you remove the vista bootloader and restore XP's. Much easier than doing it manually.

 

[dreamliner77]

Should I boot into vista and run the backup from the old version I have (1.0) or install 3.1 and do the restore from there? I cannot afford to kill this XP install for another few weeks.

 

[j79zlr]

I don't see a need to run a backup, worst case scenario you can use the recovery console from your XP cd and reinstall the bootloader.

 

[Mecham]

Well, I've had XP and RC2 dual booting with VistaBoot for a while now and have decided to nuke the Vista Partition. What do I need to do to restore the original XP bootloader?

1. You need to remove the BootManager loader from the secondary partition, and then use the BootSect.exe utility which can be located on your Vista DVD.*
2. You then need to select option /nt52 to restore the ntldr loader.
3. You then need to select option nt60 to restore the BootManager loader.
4. You will now need to edit the boot options which were previously located in the boot.ini file but no longer available on Vista. You will need to use the BcdEdit.exe tool to edit this.
Although you could remove Vista and then just edit the BcdEdit.exe tool and remove the boot file for Vista which I think would actually work, I am not 100% sure.

* Windows XP will be your primary partition because Vista will not dual boot unless XP is installed at the primary partition. Therefore the secondary partition will be Vista.

IF YOU ARE NONE TECHNICAL AND DO NOT UNDERSTAND ANY OF THE ABOVE TASK, THEN I STRONLY SUGGEST YOU DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PERFORM ANY OF THE ABOVE. YOU PERFORM THE ABOVE AT YOUR OWN RISK AND ANY LOSS OF DATA IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.

 

[j79zlr]

Exactly, use VistaBootPro.

 

[kop48]

Old method:

* Boot into XP Recovery Console (Use XP Setup disc, tell it to go to recovery once you get to setup).
* Type in fixboot and it should restore the XP bootloader.

 

[LeeJend]

I cannot afford to kill this XP install for another few weeks.

Umm. Then wait a few weeks to do the removal? The Vista partition isn't going anywhere in the mean time.

 

[dreamliner77]

Apparently the old VistaBoot (ver 1) didn't create a backup (this was in May, I don't remember if it asked). I just used 3.1 to remove the Vista bootloader and all seems fine.


and thanks LeeJend for keeping one of my quotes alive!