[DivaRae]

I didn't notice as I was reinstalling windows last week that I had accidentally unplugged my C drive. So, when I thought I was installing winxp sp1 on my C drive, it was actually installing on my D drive.

I won't go into the reasons, but I installed it without formatting the disk. Now I'd like to get rid of Windows on that drive, but leave all the other files intact, mostly for space reasons, and because I just don't want it there. Can it be done?

Thanks!!!

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Leave the D: drive alone at this point. Install XP on to the C: drive. When Windows is up and running copy files you don't want to lose from D: to C: drive.
Don't bother copying any programs or program files though - they'll have to be re-installed later since just copying them from one drive to another won't work.
Now go into Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management.
Click 'Disk Management' in the left pane.
In the bottom section of the right-hand pane, right-click drive D: and choose 'Format'
That will wipe everything off drive D:

Edited by pip22, 16 December 2007 - 12:58 PM.

[pip22]

Leave the D: drive alone at this point. Install XP on to the C: drive. When Windows is up and running copy files you don't want to lose from D: to C: drive.
Don't bother copying any programs or program files though - they'll have to be re-installed later since just copying them from one drive to another won't work.
Now go into Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Computer Management.
Click 'Disk Management' in the left pane.
In the bottom section of the right-hand pane, right-click drive D: and choose 'Format'
That will wipe everything off drive D:

Edited by pip22, 16 December 2007 - 12:58 PM.

[ClickRight]

pip22 is correct about installing XP on your C: drive. Just be sure that you don't format your D drive if you want to keep the data. To remove XP from it, simply delete the Windows folder and the Program Files folder unless there is something in there you need or you previously had your programs installed on that drive.

[DivaRae]

Thank you for the suggestions! My D drive has about 200 gigs of data on it that I don't want to lose, but my C drive is only 80 gigs. If I just delete the Windows and Program Files folders, won't that still leave windows "stuff" (for lack of a better term) on there? I'm guessing the answer is to manually delete anything I can find that was left behind by windows, right?

[ClickRight]

There will still be some hidden and system files left over on the root of the D drive after you remove the program files and Windows folder. You can delete these if you wish.