Uninstalling one OS in a dual boot system (1 Viewer)

[Greg Robertson]

I've got XP and 98 setup to dual boot and on the same partition. Now I want to get rid of 98 and just use XP. Can I just delete the win98 directory and edit the boot.ini file, or is there more to it? It makes sense to me, but I wanted to be sure and avoid a major problem.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Are they on the same partition?

 

[Mike LS]

That's how I got rid of my 98 install when I was running 2000 & 98.

I'd suggest that you first just rename the 98 directory from XP and restart the system to see if it's going to screw you up. You can just transfer any important info from 98 to XP by just dragging it to the XP "My Documents" folder instead of backing it up (if you haven't already).

Then just edit the boot.ini file and you should be set to go. If the system doesn't give you any grief over the rename, just delete the directory from XP and you're set

 

[Greg Robertson]

Rob, yup they are on the same partition.
Mike, I didn't think of just trying to rename the directory (silly me)

 

[Ken Chan]

There's also the tiny bootsect.dos file, the boot sector used to boot Win9x. It's the file referenced at the beginning of the line in boot.ini that lists Win98. You can rename-then-remove that too.

//Ken

 

[Rob Gillespie]

I'd recommend what Mike said.
I don't think you need to *edit* boot.ini though. If you right-click on My Computer, go to Advanced, then Startup & Recovery you can set the boot menu options. Just set XP to be the default OS and the timer to 0 seconds. This will automatically change boot.ini for you.
And when you're all done and sure it's working OK, you might want to think about converting your partition(s) to NTFS

 

[Greg Robertson]

Hey thanks guys. 98 is no more. Good riddance. Hasta la pasta...