Change Dual to Single Boot?

[lechumbl]

Hi all,

I have been out of the PC field too many years, and my brain does not retain the stuff anymore.

My wife's system has Vista 32 (PLEASE don't laugh) on her C drive and Win XP 64 on the D drive.

I want to delete all of the Vista junk and change the D drive XP drive to become the C drive.
And of course, the Vista C drive would become the D Backup drive.
Can I delete the C drive data, unplug the C drive, make the D, XP drive the active drive and change letter to C.
Then hook up the previous Vista drive as D and use for backup?

Damn, that even confuses me.

Take care, and thanx in advance.............

PS: If this was my system, I would go for it, but she is so picky as to not trashing her system.

[enaberif]

Originally Posted by lechumbl

Hi all,

I have been out of the PC field too many years, and my brain does not retain the stuff anymore.

My wife's system has Vista 32 (PLEASE don't laugh) on her C drive and Win XP 64 on the D drive.

I want to delete all of the Vista junk and change the D drive XP drive to become the C drive.
And of course, the Vista C drive would become the D Backup drive.
Can I delete the C drive data, unplug the C drive, make the D, XP drive the active drive and change letter to C.
Then hook up the previous Vista drive as D and use for backup?

Damn, that even confuses me.

Take care, and thanx in advance.............

PS: If this was my system, I would go for it, but she is so picky as to not trashing her system.

really not advisable.

Are you wanting to boot Win XP all the time and drop Vista?

Problem with what you are wanting to do is the registry is what will give you grief.

[SugarJ]

Your C drive has the MBR (master boot record). I think you'll need to clone your current D drive to the C Drive, or re-install. I'll wait to see who else chimes in.

Hmm, just had a thought. You may be able to use mbrfix and create a boot record on the D drive, then just swap them. Let me do some research.

[lechumbl]

Hi all,

"Are you wanting to boot Win XP all the time and drop Vista?"
Yes, XP only on C and use other drive as backup drive.

Really, after it is changed to C drive only, I plan to install Windows 7 64 on it and replace XP anyway.

Perhaps I should just copy any data, (pics, files, etc) to external drive and blow away all and just start over.
I am really trying to save myself a lot of work, even tho I still will need to reinstall all of her progs.
At least I will have "old Windows" for reference.

Take care, and thanx for the replies!!

[SugarJ]

Well, that's the best way to do it. Back up the data, and do a fresh install of W7, because you'll have to anyway. You can not upgrade XP directly to windows 7 IIRC.

[lechumbl]

Hi SugarJ,

Yes, I know you can't upgrade, I wanted to keep everything in place and just move "old windows" to another drive, and then REINSTALL the progs.
If they are there already, it makes the admin part easier.

I was also trying to make the PC down time as little as possible, you know how wives can be.
Well, maybe you don't.

Take care.............

[Zero82z]

I would suggest that you back up all your stuff, then try turning the drive into a boot drive by booting into the recovery console and running fixmbr and fixboot. If it works, then great, but if not, you still have all your data so you'll be able to do a fresh install.

[lechumbl]

Hi all,

Hopefully, last question:
If I install Windows 7 in the Vista 32 C Drive, will I still have dual boot capabilities?
If so, then my problem is solved.

I have Windows 7 on two different systems, on one it runs great, on the other, not so great.
I like to have the insurance of having XP 64 as a reserve, in case this is a "no run" systems too.

Take care..........

[Zero82z]

The Win7 installer should detect the XP installation on your other drive.

[lechumbl]

Hi Zach,

Thanx for the confirmation, and thanx to all who responded, it is appreciated.

Will post an update tomorrow.

Take care.........