Uninstalling Vista...

Hi blegend, and Welcome to NeoSmart Technologies!!

Please start a new post (in this section though) and tell us exactly what steps in the guide you successfully followed, and the exact error message & when it occured....

Shouldn't be too hard, and hopefully we'll have you up and running in no time!
 
Hi,
i've followed your guide on how to recover my Windows XP install, and was was good till I got to the actual booting, when windows usualy starts, i get the message "The following file is missing or corrupt: <windows root>\system32\hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of this file." so I jumped onto my other XP system (identical hardward both running XP pro from the same disc) and copyed the file onto my usb, then loaded up the command prompt again and copied it onto my old system, it said the file already existed, thinking it may be corrupt i just overwrote it, but the message still appears! Help... i really need this system back...
Cheers!
(p.s., you're guide was wonderfull! if you can help me solve this, you'll be my number one god for the week! :grinning: maybe even the weekend!)
 
ok, new advancements... i was able to fix that by deleteing and rebuilding my boot.ini in the Win XP recovery console. For those of you playing at home:

Boot from your CD and follow the directions to start Recovery Console. Then:

Attrib -H -R -S C:\Boot.ini
DEL C:\Boot.ini
BootCfg /Rebuild
Fixboot

:grinning:

Now, next problem... when I get into windows... it tells me that it (windows) cant find my user profile, "its path cannot be found".. EEEKKK! PLEASE HELP, all my files are stored in that profile, as well as all my settings from my applications :S

EDIT: ok, gotten myself into windows, and am looking in my C: now, when I click on Documents and settings, i get told that "Access Is Denied"... any ideas? (in a situation like this on a mac, gotta love the repair permisions command! ahh... oh well... )

EDIT 2: Ok, well... i'm now in windows... and have successfully recovered my profile <thank you local computer store for having sales on 80gb hard drives, and me buying one and cloning my word processing system then being able to stick that drive in, boot it and use it to manually copy the D&amp;S folder from Windows.Old back to the root dir :grinning:>

Now two new problems... both of less critical importance...:
1. I cant delete the old vista files: Program File, Windows (vista), Users
*tells me access is denied or will apear to delete the files (no errors)
but doesnt actualy DO anything... OR i get a "Cannot delete X, directory
not empty" error, which apears to be occuring through the whole system,
i'm running a chkdsk /f command from safe mode as I write... may fix this
so i'm told, i hope it fixes this final problem!

2. When I boot, it says : "Cant find Boot.ini, booting from c:\windows\"

<EDIT: Problem solved, '.vista' was at the end of my boot.ini file :tongueout: guess i'm getting blind in my old age!>

:grinning: cheers for sticking with my long and tiresome postal-journey!
 
w00t!!!

Excellent news my friend!

To delete the Vista files, the best way is to boot into the windows recovery console and just
Code: 
del
the directory.. No messing with ACL priveliges and UAC nonsense :smile:

BTW, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies, I'm really glad you found the guide helpful, and you should stick around and enjoy the rest of the show :smile:
 
*Edited*
Hey guys first time on this fourm so just wanted to say hi before i start with my ranting =D
i just instaled vista over my windows xp * fresh install* so windows.old folder is still on the hard drive and i am having this problem i cant seem to open my programs that i had there like word .... ect * should have read the little note before anything*
and i realized i need thous programs for work ( i keep getting this message this program is not designed for this opperating system .. or something rather like it) o i realized that i either need to remove vista
or
somehow get the programs that ran off xp to boot via vista
* if anyone can help me with my solution that would be amasing*
anyways when reading this post i cant seem to find the files nessary to put in the windows.old folder can someone tell me specificaly where they are ... asume that the root folder is C:\

any and all help is really appreceated btw =D
 
Computer Guru said:
Great!

Please take a moment to verify that the "Program Files" folder seems to have the right files from before the upgrade, then you need to do this:

1) Burn Vista to a DVD if you haven't already. It needs to be burned, not mounted or extracted.
UNLESS
1) You have another Windows or Linux partition on the system that you can boot into to delete some files from the Vista partition (i.e. Linux compiled with NTFS write support). Please post back saying which step you took.

2) Copy as many of these files from your Vista partition to the Windows.old folder:
Code: 
\ntldr 
\NTDETECT.COM 
\MSDOS.SYS 
\CONFIG.SYS 
\AUTOEXEC.BAT
Let me know which ones you copied and which ones you didn't/couldn't find.
Click to expand...
i have the same folders &amp; file as ps_hansen but i can only find autoexec.bat &amp; configsys on my vista and i have already change the setting of my folders but still i can only find two of those files.hope you can help me...
 
I'm afraid I don't exactly understand your problem.
Why don't you start a new thread and tell us your situation, and we'll see what we can do?

And, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies :smile:
 
Greetings,

I've tried the suggested and made it as far as removing the boot loader. My problem is that my Vista CD does not have any advanced settings options. It's a partner demo kit and just installs vista.

Any other way for me to rename/move the files or should I download a different version of Vista off of msdn? (This version was snail mailed to me - I have an msdn subscription)

Any help is greatly appreciated :smile:

Cheers,
Aaron
 
Welcome to NeoSmart Technologies, Aaron!

Lo and behold, there is no need to trouble yourself. Our magical EasyBCD ( http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 ) can uninstall the Vista bootloader for you.
Just install it from XP or Vista, run, manage bootloader, install XP bootloader.
 
Computer Guru said:
Welcome to NeoSmart Technologies, Aaron!

Lo and behold, there is no need to trouble yourself. Our magical EasyBCD ( http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1 ) can uninstall the Vista bootloader for you.
Just install it from XP or Vista, run, manage bootloader, install XP bootloader.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your reply :smile:

The only problem is that I can no longer boot into either Vista or XP - its saying no bootmgr is installed. All I really want to be able to do is rename the vista files and restore my windows.old files.

I cant tell if EasyBCD allows for anything like this? Sorry, not being lazy - I'm stuck on an old linux terminal with limited 'browsability'!

I was thinking something similar to WinPE 2.0 would work but I don't have MS access to this. Barts PE doesnt appear to support the Vista filesystem either... boo

Thanks,
Aaron
 
Boot from your XP CD. Enter the recovery console. Enter this text
Code: 
fixmbr
fixboot
fixmbr
fixboot
quit
 
Okay, so I followed all the instructions, and it worked; except that for some odd reason "Documents and Settings" didn't get copied. And I have permission errors everywhere.

So what I'm trying to do now is make me the owner of everything I need. So I get XP to boot up, and since DaS is "hidden" from plain view, it can't find my profile :frowning: Just hit some bumps, lookin for advice if anyone has it.

[EDIT]
I just copied my Windows.old folder to a different drive, rebooted and installed XP Pro again, then went back in with the Windows Vista boot-disk and copied everything back over. Now I'm in the tedious process of going through each drive and making the Administrators the owners of all my drives/files. Ugh... this is gonna take a while.
 
Yeah, that's a know bug errrr "feature" of Windows Vista. It refuses to update the ACL privelages.

If you want, you can instead format a drive as FAT32 instead of NTFS (HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED) and copy the files over to there - it'll take care of the ACL.
 
hello... i did all the procedure but nothings work 4 me.
when i execute a command and its always says "A duplicate file name is exist,
or the file cannot be found" and also "the system cannot find the file specified".
last is "file not found -' 0 file<s> copied.

Addendum:

pls help
 
Last edited:
Hello there, i am new here!
wow it looks like lots of people are asking for help here, but for now i will say thanks for the guide and i am going to attempt to kill vista ONCE AND FOR ALL!
but i forgot to get a DVD so i will have to do the partitioning thing... yes you might've guessed that i am clueless with operating system things because i dont dare do anything with them, after i had to keep re installing evrything again and again just because i tried to get rid of vista...
if i fail horribly i will post here screaming for help wanting it before evrybody else next tuesday at my dads house.
wish me luck.

edit: OH WAIT i dont have to make a DVD do I if I have the install vista CD right behind me right now do i? please hurry i can't take another error message telling me to get a programmer!

oh god, this thread is dead!
 
Last edited:
I'm assuming you want to go back to XP. The Vista DVD ins't going to help you.

If you can boot XP, install EasyBCD there and follow the instructions in the attached image. Then you can delete or format Vista's partition in disk management to get rid of its files.
 

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hello im stuck i have vista on C drive installed, and XP.Old folder i copied the files over but im stuck at the thing where you copy boot exe from vista dvd to root? where is root folder you mean that Xp.Old Folder???... when i went to command thing Vista repaird dvd CMD i got stuck on the ren windows windows.vista command it wouldn't work? help thanks


edit this part
Browse to the \Boot\ folder on the DVD, and grab "bootsect.exe" and copy it to your drive C:\ in the root folder. where is root folder in C? or do i just delete using EasyBCD? instead of this ? confused one or the other?
 
Last edited:
Hi bubbaganoosh, welcome to NST.
There is no "root" folder. The root of a partition means ouside of any folder.
The root of the C disk is C:\
If you have a windows.old folder, presumably you just upgraded an old XP system to Vista ?
If so, that folder is just provided to allow you to uninstall Vista and revert back to XP. You cannot dual boot from it.
If you want to dual boot, you'll need to create separate partitions for XP and Vista and install one system in each partition.
You'll find instructions on how to do it in the wiki.
 
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