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Old 01-06-2008, 08:24 PM
sasquat4 sasquat4 is offline
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Default Moving XP to another Harddrive, Dual boot with Vista


First, let me apologise if this has been asked and I haven;t found the appropriate answer, I;ll try not to be long winded.

This is the first time I have built a system from the ground up.

I originally planned a dual boot set-up with Vista and XP on separate Hard Drives using 2 Raptor 150 gig drives, and having 2 500gb drives for data storage. Unfotunately one of the 150 gig drives was defective. In the mean time, I temporarily installed XP on one of the 500 gig drives first, then installed Vista on its permanent 150 gig drive. The dual boot has worked flawlessly to this point.

Now my second 150 gig is back from warranty but I cannot get XP off the 500gig drive. I have followed the instructions on the "Remove XP from an XP/Vista Dual boot" with no success, cannot reformat the drive.

To make matters worse, my drive paths are as follows in my comp settings, C:/ 150 gig Vista drive, D:/ 500gig XP drive, e:/data drive. When booting using either XP or Vista Install disks it finds the OS on e:/. I didn;t want to proceed with a repair/forced reformat without knowing what this will do. As it stands now, the computer is working fine, I just don;t want to leave XP on that 500gig drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.



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Old 01-07-2008, 03:22 AM
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For an update, used XP install disk, deleted partition on the 500 meg drive, tried to install on 150 gig raw, said xp needs to put some files on a compatible formatted drive. Doesn;t recognize the 2nd 500 gig drive even though it is NTFS and working fine in Vista, can;t format the deleted 500gig drive or the 150 gig drive.

Cancelled installation hoping that at least the xp drive would be wiped, couldn;t boot Vista...inserted vista disk, tried repairing install, couldn;t find a working copy of Vista. used recovery panel and tried the first option, (can;t remember the title) but it went through a bunch of tests, repaired a bad partition, now Vista loads, but it restored the 500gig XP Drive....back to square one!

I used easyBCD and the dual boot menu is gone as well.

I should also mention that all drive paths are different for the install from CD than they are in Vista or XP?????

Any help would be greatly appreciated...would like to avoid a total re-install of both OS's.




Last edited by sasquat4; 01-07-2008 at 03:23 AM.. Reason: addition
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Old 01-07-2008, 02:44 PM
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Vista should be able to format the other drive no problem. It is not tied to the OS on the drive, and does not care that the files are Windows XP related.

Also the installation paths will of course be different. Windows requires it's installation drive to be known as C:\ thus each OS will say it's drive is C and others are D, E, etc.


How many drives are in this computer? If the 500GB is not staying in it, is it important to erase it now? simply install the new drive and put XP on it as you did before.

Also it is usually safer to install all OS on the same drive, but separate partitions, but this is still your choice.

Are the drives SATA or IDE? This makes a difference in whether the OS CDs can find all drives.



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Old 01-08-2008, 03:03 PM
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Looks like a have a bit more of a mess on my hands.....

Used Vista Install disk to try and remove partition on the XP Disk. Thought it was successful, exited the install and rebooted, would not boot into vista or XP. Repair on Vista install disk did not work.

Thought that I would then install XP on the 150gig drive that I wanted it on, did the install, everything went fine. Tried to format the C: drive that xp used to be on....formatting went all the way through until the very end when it said "Could not continue format". Tried to use EasyBCD and VistabootPro to reinstate the link to Vista...neither could find the Vista installation...cannot figure the proper drive designations to manually enter them in the boot file. Tried Vista Install Disk once more to try and repair Start-up, now it boots to Vista only, and can't find the XP install now. When looking under computer management/storage, it shows c:/ being empty, but its a (System) drive, so can;t format it, e: (boot)(system) drive with Vista on it and the f:drive where xp is doesn;t show as a (system) drive at all.

My original plan was to have c:\ 150gig as Vista d:\150 gig as XP (separate drives so that I could get rid of one of them easily if I felt I didn't need it) and e: and f: 500 gig drives for storage, either separate or in a RAID 0 configuration.

As it stands now, I have all my drive paths screwed up, computer thinking that the one 500 gig drive is a system drive that is unformattable, yet there is nothing on it. My boot file shows only one OS, can;t find the other one.

At this point I;m willing to start from scratch and redo everything. Will the "Kill Disk" program reformat a drive even though its an OS drive? If it will, I will Kill disk the 2 drives that XP is and was on, then unplug all the drives but one, reinstall Vista. Plud in the next 150 gig drive, install XP, then plug in the last two remaining drives.

If there is some problems with my logic, please let me know...I;m pulling my hair out at this point. Thanks.



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Old 01-08-2008, 03:06 PM
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Sorry William, I didn;t answer your questions.

They are all Sata Drives, 2 western digital 10,000rpm raptor drives 150gig and 2 Western Digital 7200rpm 500gig drives.

Meant to use all 4 in the system.

My biggest mistake was using the 500 gig for the first XP install.



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Old 01-08-2008, 05:48 PM
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For what you want to accomplish I would do the following.
Disconnect all the drives except one to install an OS on.

Install an OS, boot the OS disk, make sure to delete any partitions, create a new partition, full format that partition and continue with the first OS install.
Install updates, drivers etc.

Disconnect first OS drive
Connect second OS drive and install using the same routine as the first install.

Now connect them both, choose the default boot order you want from the BIOS setup. Most modern board BIOS now support changing the boot drive without having to enter setup each time. Usually F8 key during POST screen. This would be the easiest way to dual boot, especialy if you think you may want to remove an OS later. Your other option is to install a boot manager now on one of the OS's.

Now connect the 500GB drives and everything should work like you were originaly trying to setup.
You may have to repartition and format the old XP drive from a boot CD to get rid if it's 'system' disk status.




Last edited by squirrelnmoose; 01-08-2008 at 10:18 PM.. Reason: typo
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Old 01-09-2008, 03:55 PM
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After 14 hours Straight and much coffee, I;m almost to where I should have been on the original Computer Build.

To anyone contimplating a Dual Boot Setup, I would recommend installing Vista first. If you are using more than 3 gigs of Ram, dig up the windows update you need to correct this before continuing (using just 2 gigs of your ram) This is one of the reasons I temporarily installed XP in the first place.

I used Kill Disk to eradicate the drives XP were on and disconnected them from the motherboard. Unfortunately this made Vista Unrepairable. There must have been some of the boot info on the XP drive, probably due to it being the first install. (I guess maybe I;m wrong about the Unrepairable, but after 4 different attempts using the Vista install disk, I gave up)

I started from scratch with one drive, installed Vista and updated it. I then disconnected it and reconnected the drive for XP and installed and updated it. I then had to disconnect it, reconnect the Vista Drive and run repair off the Vista Disk. I then had to download EasyBCD and manually enter the settings for the XP drive, reconnected the XP drive and voila!, Dual Boot is Alive!.

I then connected my 2 data drives, reformatted the one I used Kill disk on.

Now my drive paths are the way they should be, unfortunately I still have the multitude of setting up and program installs to go through.

I;m amazed at all the articles on how easy it is to setup a dual boot set up, and also amazed at how little there is on how difficult it is to remove one.

Thanks for your assistance on this one!



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Old 01-09-2008, 04:49 PM
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Well done.
I felt the same about trying to remave a dual boot and how there is little information on what Vista will allow you to do after installing a dual boot config.

I installed the Vista trial, to see if my programs would have any issues. After I determined everything was working and wanted to remove XP I learned the hard way , same as you , on trying to remove XP.

I hope we helped, or at least let you know that it is possible.



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