How do I remove this?

[QuicktimeEvent]

I'm sorry to the more tech literate than I on this, but I have Vista 64 installed on one partition, and in the past had XP installed on another. I had no idea how to remove XP and so just tried to reformat the partition, which Vista wouldn't let me do. Thus, I just said screw it I can just manually delete everything and that kinda-sorta-maybe-not-really worked, but there's still a good amount of files that I don't have the permission to delete (and of course now XP won't boot).

How do I remove XP entirely from this partition? This is especially so I don't keep getting that 20 second boot manager every time I startup.

 

[FallenRainbows]

Well... force vista to delete it, either up your permission or cmd.exe . however I do not know how to format partitions or if you can via cmd.exe

 

[j0z]

If you want to get rid of the partition, you are gonna have to reformat your entire drive, which means that you will have to back up all your important data somewhere. Which can be a pain if you don't have an external drive or another computer.

 

[The Great Zegrool]

Could you use command prompt?

I don't know, do what more experienced people say.

 

[DoctorWhat]

1) Make sure you know EXACTLY how big your vista and XP partitions are. Preferably in Megabytes.
2) Go here [http://gparted.sourceforge.net/]
3) Burn that file onto a dvd or cd.
4) reboot your computer, and press the key to go into BIOS settings. (usually it tells you what to press around when the manufacturer's logo come up. It's often F7)
5) Change the Boot Sequence (or similar) to CD first.
6)reboot again, with the disc in your drive.
7) GParted will now show your different partitions, but they're not named. This is why you needed to know the sizes.
8) it's a simple right-click, click and drag, etc. interface from here on in, and you can make your Vista partition take up the whole drive. (Leave any small partitions or your computer may not boot, sorry if you know this, but just being safe)

NOTE1: If you feel uneasy at any point STOP! once you click the OK button in GParted, there's no turning back. Any damage will be irreparable, and your computer will be a brick (you can always re-install vista, but you lose your files)
NOTE2: Backup your important files. Just in case.
NOTE3: Be prepared to leave your computer for, literally, HOURS; depending on the size of your disc... It could be done in 30mins, it could take 6 hours...

 

[QuicktimeEvent]

Wow and I thought it would just be something simple! I apologize though, it seems I've forgotten that I had installed Bioshock (which installs a now pointless SecuRom entry even though there's no activation limit afaik) so what's stopping me from deleting the files isn't permissions but rather that Windows says the folder doesn't exist when I try (In the past it was a permissions problem.)

Is there any way to at least remove XP from the boot manager? There's still 9 gigs of space on the partition being used which sucks but I can live with it as long as I can get rid of the 20 sec boot manager.

 

[Laughing Man]

1) Make sure you know EXACTLY how big your vista and XP partitions are. Preferably in Megabytes.
2) Go here
3) Burn that file onto a dvd or cd.
4) reboot your computer, and press the key to go into BIOS settings. (usually it tells you what to press around when the manufacturer's logo come up. It's often F7)
5) Change the Boot Sequence (or similar) to CD first.
6)reboot again, with the disc in your drive.
7) GParted will now show your different partitions, but they're not named. This is why you needed to know the sizes.
8) it's a simple right-click, click and drag, etc. interface from here on in, and you can make your Vista partition take up the whole drive. (Leave any small partitions or your computer may not boot, sorry if you know this, but just being safe)

Or you could just stick either your Vista disc or XP disc in the drive, shut down, restart your computer ensuring that your CD drive is primary boot device, let the disc boot and then from their just delete the partition that XP is stored on.

Once done you can reboot in to Vista and use the device manager to reformat the deleted partition into blank free space.

Is there any way to at least remove XP from the boot manager? There's still 9 gigs of space on the partition being used which sucks but I can live with it as long as I can get rid of the 20 sec boot manager.

If you leave the boot manager alone which version of Windows does it boot into, if it's Vista then you need to go in to

Control Panel
System
Select the 'Advanced Tab'
Select 'Start Up and Recovery'
Find the option that says something like

'Time to display list of Operating Systems' and then set the figure to 0 or uncheck the tick box.

To delete the menu totally and prevent access to XP totally then select the 'edit' button

The primary boot OS should the first option and should look something like this

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XXCLONE: (Cloned Volume) [d:0,p:1] \WINDOWS" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

The XP OS will have different disk and partition values, you would have to delete that one however I would strongly suggest posting the contents of the file here first so that we can see what options you have since deleting the wrong one will prevent you from booting your computer.