Removing Second Instance of XP

[Geoff Wickstrom]

My problem is, I have a new system with two hard drives. Don't ask why/how, but I now have XP loaded onto both drives (not what I wanted). My C drive version is setup and works great wrt connecting to email/internet etc. The second version which resides on my 200G E:drive is of no use and I really wanted this drive to be empty and used for data storage only.

How do I go about removing this. I'm concerned that I may accidentally remove XP off the drive I want and/or screw up things worse than I already have. Help?!!

[dl65]

Geoff Wickstrom......ok ...here's what to consider.......
go to the control panel and click on ...Administrative Tools , then select Computer management , then disk management , then hi-lite disk E: ......then select format .....and it will be wiped .

dl65  

[GW]

Thanks

[Mac]

You may need to edit your boot.ini file now...

Control panel, System, Advanced, Startup and Recovery Settings, Edit ... the boot.ini file so it looks like...

[boot loader]
timeout=10
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" /fastdetect

OR...

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

IF... you have installed the Recovery Console on your boot drive there will be an additional line...

C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

[GW]

Thanks for the tip on removing the dual boot residual. For some reason though, my system won't boot up correctly. It stalls in the boot system with the message:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Thankfully I have a work laptop I'm able to continue on, but any suggestions would be great!  

[Mac]

HAL.DLL

Or use the BootIniEdit bootdisk to re-edit the boot.ini file (follow the link below) if your Windows XP is not installed on partition (1)

If you Google for HAL.DLL you'll find that a lot more information is available.