Remove XP from a Single Drive XP/Vista Dual Boot

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never74

Member
I have a sinlge 160 GB drive laptop with three partitions. "WindowsXP C:" - 25 GB - System, Active Primary Partition. "WindowsVista K:" - 49 GB - Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Logical Drive. And "Extended Z:" - 113 GB - Primary Partition (Which is where all my documents are kept). The Vista bootloader is on K:.

I've gradually started to use Vista more frequently, and would like to get rid of XP Pro at this point. I would like to reassign the drive letters between XP and Vista, and make Vista the Primary Partition, and then delete the XP partition and reallocate the unused space to the Extended Z: partition. First, can I do this? Second, how? Third, what am I going to screw up by doing this?
 
Hi never74, welcome to NST

First enable viewing of hidden files and folders as well as protected operating system files in folder options. Copy your boot folder and bootmgr from XP's partition over to Vistas. Set Vista's partition as active. Boot from a Vista DVD/Recovery disc and use startup repair if it doesnt boot. You should than be safe to use XP's partition for other purposes or extend Vista's partition with the free space after you've deleted it.
 
Copy to which folder. . .

Justin: Thanks for your post. My boot folder on C: "XP" is in a different place than the Vista folder, which is in the Windows folder. Just copy C:\boot to K:\Windows\Boot, or should I create to K:\boot?
 
Copy boot from the root of your XP partition to the root of Vistas partition. If XP's C: and Vista's K:, than you'd copy from C:\boot to K:\boot.
 
Re: Copy to which folder. . .

Thanks again. I'll give it a shot. Anything you see in this screenshot that would negate that action before I move forward?
 

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Good thing you provided that screenshot.

Well, we have another problem here. You cannot make a logical (partition with blue banner) partition active. It must be primary partition to do this and you can only boot your computer from a primary partition. Use gparted/Acronis Disk Director to convert it to a primary partition and you should be set.
 
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