Removing XP from dual boot Vista

B

bobggg

Member
I read the March 7 post and it is not quite my situation plus I did not understand the solution.

My situation is that I have been using dual boot for about 6 months and now plan to comit fully to Vista SP1. Both systems are on the same drive, with XP being the first partition and Vista the second. I would like to remove XP to have a simple disk.

I have True Image and have tried the following on a cloned disk, none of which worked.

1. Deleted XP partition, used Vista CD and then bootrec.exe/fixmbr then bootrec.exe/fixboot.
2. Restored Vista part on formated disk, restored MBR, then above bootrec things.

I know I can just shorten the boot selection time and live with XP on the drive, but it would be nice to get rid of XP. :smile:

All help is appreciated.
 
XP is easy to remove. Using a free Linux drive tool known as GParted live for cd you delete the XP primary and grow the Vista primary afterwards. When rebooting you pause long enough to swapout disks or you if have two optical drives installed with the Vista disk in a dvd drive you then boot from that to use the automatic startup repair tool. Vista will then become the sole OS having repaired the boot record.

The failure to results when cloning is quite simple. Vista is not like XP where that can be cloned and actually work. Vista generally depends on the original configuration in order for the automatic startup repair tool to work. In order to see Vista run on any drive you have to perform a clean install there.
 
I must have done something wrong. I downloaded gparted-livecd0.3.411 iso and burned to cd. When I rebooted I got lots of text, but no graphical interface. Please send a link that gives the correct file.
 
You will likely want one ot the platform independent releases like the 0.3.3.0 found on the live cd/usb download page seen at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828

The 0.3.2.0 right below it is also cross platform. You'll find those two about half way down the page there. The image here will show how they look as you scroll down to them.



If you have never used GParted before it's easy to get lost when trying to see it load up. The ones that followed afterwards wouldn't even load once the start x tool was added. The 0.3.4.11 was one of the newer ones tried then while the latest release hasn't been looked over yet since none of the ones that came since were listed as cross platform independent.

When the initial prompts are seen simply press the enter key to see the defaults loaded. Leave the 24bit at 24bit and 1024x768 the way they are since the 332bit setting stalls and the higher 1280x1024 resolution pushes too much out of view. The general information as well as screen shots on how to use GParted is seen at http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/generalities/gparted.htm

Once you try a few dry runs before making any actual changes and have used it a few times you'll see how easy it is. You'll be wondering why you haven't seen it before.
 
Hi PC eye,
Thanks for your efforts, but it is starting to look like I may have to live with dual boot. As you suggested, I tried both 0.3.2.0 and the 0.3.3.0 isos with the same results. I got the graphics displays and selected the defaults and all went well up to the resolution screen. When I selected the default 1024X768, the screen went blank and there was no disk activity. It remained this way. I rebooted and tried fewer bits and lower resolution with the same results.
Should I give up?
 
When using GParted try the classic boot mode. I dont remember exactly the title of it. But i know it is the old style this will allow you to get the interface.

Have you tried to move the mouse at all? To see if the interface comes up?

Also with what you are doing you will have to make sure that Vista's partition is the active system drive. If not then you will not be able to boot back into Vista at all.

Gparted is the best tool but there are others you can use. Acronis Disk Director among other can also get rid fo the XP partition for you. But let me ask this. Do you plan on extending the Vista partition to include this empty space or are you just going to create a new blank drive with it?
 
Makaveli213 said:
Have you tried to move the mouse at all? To see if the interface comes up?

Do you plan on extending the Vista partition to include this empty space or are you just going to create a new blank drive with it?
Click to expand...

No display response from moving mouse or hitting enter. Just seems to have gone to never never land.

Yes I plan to expand partition and I know how to do that. I have Acronis True Image Home.
 
Well i will tell you right now that your attempts will not work. As the boot menu will be able to be recovered. As of right now your boot is onthe 2nd partition of the first hard drive. (Guess)

Now take away the first partition and put themm together and Vista will not boot. You will be forced to re-install.
 
When burning the 35mb iso to disk what program did you use? Besides the program the media used could alos be a problem.

For seeing GParted(0.3.3.0 loads up quite a bit faster then the previous releases) and even Linux distros burned to disk the free version of BurnOn continues to see good results. That's found at http://www.burnworld.com/burnoncddvd/

Once you have a good burn all you do is press the enter key at each prompt and it will load right up to the main gui using the defaults. GParted and any other drive partitioning program not fdisk shoudl see the XP Primary removed and the Vista primary grown in size. Expanding a partition with GParted only takes seconds. sOn the other hand shrinking, copying, and moving partitions are real time consumers there.
 
I used Deepburner1. I do not think it is a problem with the iso on the CD. I burned three CD's with versions 0.3.411, 0.3.3.0 and 0.3.2.0. I selected the defaults and everthing seemed OK until the final resolution selection. When I selected the default 1024X768, the screen went blank and stayed blank. The results were the same with lower resolution.
Thanks again, I will just live with dual boot with small time to chose the OP system.
 
You can use other disk partitioning programs to accomplish what you need.

For instance, if you burn an Ubuntu install CD, you can use it to launch the live CD environment and run GParted from there. OR you can use an Acronis or Partition Magic CD as well.
 
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