Half WinXP Installation

[saif]

Hi. Thought someone here could help me maybe.
I've got a win2K machine with 40G HDD.
C: [4Gb] D: [~25G] E: [windows2k 4G] F: [5G]

It has got a bit messy and....
XP has been half installed (halfway through setup AND cannot be completed) onto the C drive and I want to delete the files so it does not automatically ask which OS I want and to free up the space. I assume I cannot just delete the Windows directory!

What do I need to do?

Cheers in advance

[fifty?ballz]

Sounds like a bit of a pickle. If only Windows XP is going on C and theres
no other important things on it, just wipe all of it and start again, but backup
your boot.ini file first to a different drive, as normally C is where it's
stored it contains information on what OS you have installed for choosing
at boot time (so it should contain information about your current 2K
install which you'll want to add on a new line if XP makes a new
boot.ini on C after it's installed.)

Good luck, fingers crossed I haven't given you really bad advice.

[FelixofMars]

I also advise once you have installed XP turning off things like Desktop Sharing,Hibernation Mode,System Restore and moving your swap drive to another directory because you simply wont have enough room on that drive after a few months.

tbh I cant be bothered with any sort of partition anymore, more trouble than there worth and with todays speed not really noticable improvment.

[Wild_Cat]

No, but partitions come in very handy if you plan to format/reinstall (read: if you use Windows). For example, my Windows box has 2 partitions: "System" and "Data".

As for your problem, Saif, I'd recommend you just format C and reinstall Windows 2000 (personal preference -- I don't like XP), since your data is already backed up on another drive (unless I'm mistaken).

[saif]

Cheers guys. Basically, I have working win2k PC - it is installed on E: and am using it now. So I don't "need" to reinstall win2k do I?

I honestly do not know if it is safe to "just" format C: as I assumed there would be some reference to the bodged winXP within my win2k.

CAn I just format C: and leave it at that?

[Wild_Cat]

Not sure about it -- Windows hates being installed on a drive that is not C: si I've never tried that.

There are some files that are necessary for your system to boot, mainly NTLDR, boot.ini and a few others, and I suspect they're stored on C.

Here's what you should do:
- Back up boot.ini
- Delete the C:\Windows folder (or whatever folder it is WinXP tried to install itself in)
- Edit boot.ini and remove the line that mentions WinXP

That last step should rid you of the boot menu, or at least of the WinXP option inside it.

If that fails, boot from a rescue disk (or put your hard drive as slave in another computer) and restore boot.ini from your backup. The menu will be back with the WinXP option (which will of course not work since XP is not there anymore), but at least your computer will boot.