Uninstall Windows

So I reformatted, somehow installed Windows 4 times. I made them not show as an option to boot into on start up, but how do I kill them? They're all on the same partition... is there a way to just get rid of them? Thankya.

You should beable to remove them via the MBR, if you happen to have a boot disk, or know how to use fdisk, the command i think is fdisk /mbr, that should erase previous windows installations on the boot record.

Actually, I don't. :*(

Do you have an old copy of a Windows 98 Boot disk or something?

It's XP, I have the recovery CD it came with. It's really just the XP cd. No floppy drive on this comp.

Yeah I know just was wondering cause you can still boot with the 98 boot disk to use the fdisk utility to format the mbr, but unsure of how to do it another way.

I could be wrong, but the recovery disk might have the format utility on it. Stick it in the CD drive, try to boot off it instead of the hard drive, then look for the fdisk utility.

(Then again, I could be remembering incorrectly --- I make my own specialized recovery disks and selectively and specifically include certain utilities for just the problem/situation you find yourself in.)

You will probably have to drop to the command prompt level to do this... if it gives you that option... Good luck.

Nope, no option for that... thanks though, guys. I appreciate the help!

I assume you can boot "normally" rightnow.

If not.. ignore the rest of this....

You may be able to delete the "extra" installs via the Control Panel/Admin Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management tools.

Another alternative, is to make your own bootable CD using a CDRW.... format and sys it, copy the desired utilities onto it.... then boot off it and you can manipulate the disk as if it were new.... including wiping everything out and starting over or just wiping out the windows installs one at a time by brute force deletion.

If you have the full version of xp put it in and boot from disk...if it won't let you at the startup screen hit f 12 and it will give you the option to boot from the disk.

When you boot from disk it will ask you what partition to put it in and will show all your partitions. It will ask you if you want to delete a partition. Choose the partition with all the installs on it and delete it ...it will ask if you are sure because you are deleting system files...won't matter because you wiill be loading a clean install.

This is to do a clean install so if you want to save certain things to add you will have to do that and back it up before the install.

If you only have a winxp upgrade cd search on the net because if I remember right if the partition you are installing to is clean then the upgrade disk will actually do a full install...a lil secret most people don't know. I think there may be a trick to it so you might want to google it first.

Try http://www.bootdisk.com/

If you just want to remove the options from the menu, edit c:\boot.ini
If you want to remove old windows installations, just delete the ones that arent in use!

Nope, no trick to it at all, it does it just like you say. It will ask for an old windows install cd though to prove you're allowed to do a 'full' install.

Hey all! I can boot normally... Eggy, are you sure that deleting Windows, Windows.0, Windows.1 will get rid of it? I already modded boot.ini.

I don't see anything in Disk Management to uninstall windows, sorry.

I'll think about the bootdisk thing, but not if I can just delete 'em

The Disk Management suggestion was a means to delete the partition if necessary... not specifically to delete a specific Windows installation.. sorry. I wasn't clear.

Oh, thanks. I don't actually want to lose all my data, I just need to kill the OS's... all except the one I'm functioning on. The rest have no data, but mine has, you know, all my stuff.

Lol. I understand. I have been through the "omg.. what the heck do I do to recover this pig from whatever the hell I did to it" situation before myself - more times than I care to admit .

IF you KNOW what windows installation is active.... then as has been suggested, just delete any other windows installation directory. Reboot. Rinse Repeat until you only have one funtional windows install on the partition. I tend to do this one install at a time because I am essentially cautious and have a horrible memory - so the less I have to remember, if I screw something up and need to try to undo it, the better.

IF you have a second hard drive, all of this can essentially be moot - just copy all the data files from physical disk A to physical disk B. Some people can access separate partitions on a single drive and can accomplish data "saves" that way. Some can't seem to make it work. Either way, if you can save off all the data to a partition/disk different from what you have currently working, then you might just find it easiest/most "clean" to delete the partition in question (after doing the data save) and reinstalling ONE windows install again.

A last possibility for data save is somewhat obvious but could be tedious if your data is in the GB range.... That is use your CDRW the same way we used to make data backups on floppies... Then, once completed, delete the partition and start over.

I know that starting over is not what's actually desired here... sometimes seeming to be a "kill a fly with a cannon" method, but when I have done this (out of frustration or deliberately) I tend to wind up better off than if I had futzed around trying to save things the way they were with minimal "work" on my part. OF course, I also look at it as time is my friend if I can summon the patience to do it only when I can concentrate....not necessarily my strongest sui any more.

Good lluck.

Woo hoo! It works! Thanks all!

congrats.


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