[walton74]

I installed windows xp on a dell latitude laptop which already had what came up on boot up as windows 2000 professional, which I was using previously, and microsoft windows, which I could never boot up to see what it is exactly. I now have all three listed as choices to boot when I power up and I would like to remove everything except the xp professional that I just installed. Will someone please tell me how I can delete the files for the other 2 operating systems. There is only one partition and all 3 are on it and I only have like 300MB of disk space left available on a 4 GB HDD. Please Assist.

Thank you in advance

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Do you have all the data you need backed up? The simplest thing to do would be to format the drive and reinstall everything from scratch. That would free up your disk space, however that also means you lose everything on the drive. Also - Why are you on a 4GB drive? If you're going to be doing just about anything with the computer, I would highly recommend that you put a new drive in. They're not *that* expensive... Here's a 40GB drive from newegg for $40...

[jt1990]

Do you have all the data you need backed up? The simplest thing to do would be to format the drive and reinstall everything from scratch. That would free up your disk space, however that also means you lose everything on the drive. Also - Why are you on a 4GB drive? If you're going to be doing just about anything with the computer, I would highly recommend that you put a new drive in. They're not *that* expensive... Here's a 40GB drive from newegg for $40...

[wannabe1]

Hello walton74...

Like jt1990, I'm curious about why you have such a small HDD and how you managed to get 3 operating systems onto such a small drive. However, it is possible to remove the unwanted systems from the machine.

While logged on to the operating system you wish to keep, right click on My Computer and choose "Properties". In the System Properties window, click the "Advanced" tab, then, in the Startup and Recovery section, click on the "Settings" button. In the window that opens, click on the "Edit" button. A notepad window will open (boot.ini)...copy the contents of that window and paste it here for us.

wannabe1

[walton74]

My mom got this thing off ebay I only installed xp from a reinstallation cd It came with this small HD but I only plan to use it for internet and writing papers. Here are the contents.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

[The Admiral]

I only plan to use it for internet and writing papers.

*The Admiral coughs.
Linux!
*The Admiral coughs.

There's a cold going around....

[wannabe1]

Ok...one last thing before we do this.

Click Start, then Run, type %systemroot% and click "Ok".

What folder opens? Is it WINDOWS or WINNT? It should be Windows, but I want to make sure before we start removing directories.

[jt1990]

*The Admiral coughs.
Linux!
*The Admiral coughs.

There's a cold going around.... :head_hurts_kr:

[walton74]

WINDOWS, kind sir.

[wannabe1]

Go back to the boot.ini file as you did before and remove the text shown in red below. Then click "File" on the toolbar and choose "Save".

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

Close all open windows...then open My Computer and double click on Local Disk C:. Locate the WINNT folder, right click on it, and choose "Delete". You may get a couple of prompts asking if you are sure you want to do that and telling you it is too large for the recycle bin. Agree to these prompts and any others.

Once this completes, reboot. It should boot directly to the XP Pro and the Win2000 directory will be gone. It's a good idea to run a disk cleanup and defragment the drive after doing this...just to tidy things up a bit.

[walton74]

Thank you very much. I'm about to reboot and run the defrag. I really appreciate your help.

[flash793]

Go back to the boot.ini file as you did before and remove the text shown in red below. Then click "File" on the toolbar and choose "Save".

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

Close all open windows...then open My Computer and double click on Local Disk C:. Locate the WINNT folder, right click on it, and choose "Delete". You may get a couple of prompts asking if you are sure you want to do that and telling you it is too large for the recycle bin. Agree to these prompts and any others.

Once this completes, reboot. It should boot directly to the XP Pro and the Win2000 directory will be gone. It's a good idea to run a disk cleanup and defragment the drive after doing this...just to tidy things up a bit.

Can you please help me too? T_T I have 3 operating systems and I only want to keep 1. The 2 I don't want are windows xp professional

[flash793]

Go back to the boot.ini file as you did before and remove the text shown in red below. Then click "File" on the toolbar and choose "Save".

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

Close all open windows...then open My Computer and double click on Local Disk C:. Locate the WINNT folder, right click on it, and choose "Delete". You may get a couple of prompts asking if you are sure you want to do that and telling you it is too large for the recycle bin. Agree to these prompts and any others.

Once this completes, reboot. It should boot directly to the XP Pro and the Win2000 directory will be gone. It's a good idea to run a disk cleanup and defragment the drive after doing this...just to tidy things up a bit.

Can you please help me too? T_T I have 3 operating systems and I only want to keep 1. The 2 I don't want are windows xp professional

[flash793]

Go back to the boot.ini file as you did before and remove the text shown in red below. Then click "File" on the toolbar and choose "Save".

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

Close all open windows...then open My Computer and double click on Local Disk C:. Locate the WINNT folder, right click on it, and choose "Delete". You may get a couple of prompts asking if you are sure you want to do that and telling you it is too large for the recycle bin. Agree to these prompts and any others.

Once this completes, reboot. It should boot directly to the XP Pro and the Win2000 directory will be gone. It's a good idea to run a disk cleanup and defragment the drive after doing this...just to tidy things up a bit.

Can you please help me too? T_T I have 3 operating systems and I only want to keep 1. The 2 I don't want are windows xp professional

[n3ko]

Hi Flash, and welcome.

Just wanted to let you know - you will not get help from posting in another person's thread. These are good to learn more and use as guidelines to try and fix your own issues, but posting in someone's thread will not get you a reply.

You need to post your own new topic and state your computer specs, operating system(s), and your problem as well as what you want to do or fix. You should get a response quickly.

Edited by n3ko, 25 September 2009 - 10:26 AM.

[FlutterPwn]

Deleted

Edited by FlutterPwn, 12 October 2012 - 03:42 PM.