Removing Win98SE from a Dual Boot HDD

[Kubie]

My son has Win98SE on his HDD C:\ and W2K on as D:\ on the same HDD. Can Win98SE be removed and the 5gig of space recovered for use by W2K? Or is a reformat, reinstall in order? He does have PM8 but I don't know if it can be used in this case.

Carl

[crjdriver]

You can edit the boot.ini file to load win2k without the boot menu. After that, you can remove all of the windows and app folders from C. If you format C, you will need to replace the boot files ie ntldr, ntdetect.com. This can be done manually or by a repair install of win2k. The repair install removes all of the updates so that is somewhat a pain.

I would just replace the files manually or just delete all of the os folders from C. You can then use C for storage, etc.

[Kubie]

crjdriver,

Thank you for the reply.

Boy!, That sounds involved and alittle over my head. I think I'll press him for a reformat and reinstall.

Carl

[crjdriver]

It really is not that bad. It will take you just a few min to manually fix the boot files.

[pcadikt]

I`ve done this several times similar to what crjdriver suggested with XP Pro and W2000. Boot to W2k and then copy NTLDR, ntdetect, boot.ini and bootfp, if it is there, to a folder on your D: drive. Then delete the entire contents of the C:\ drive. Now, move the saved boot files back to the C:\ drive. Your C:\ drive is the boot drive and that is where W2k will look for the boot files to start.

To simplify things without having to edit the boot.ini file go to control panel\system\advanced\start up and recovery. Make sure Windows 2000 is the default operating system and clear the box that says display list of operating systems..... reboot and you will start in W2k like W98 never existed and have the C: drive to store files. If you want to edit the boot.ini later it`s easy. The whole process takes about two minutes.