The Hindu Business Line : Multibooting

My system is installed with Windows XP and Windows 2003. Windows 2003 version is an evaluation version of 180 days that has expired. How do I uninstall Windows 2003, which is in dual-boot with Windows XP?

S. Amulraj

‘Multibooting’ is the process of installing more than one Operating System (OS) on a computer and at startup you can select which OS to use. The selection of OS is made through a boot loader or boot manager when the computer first starts up, and then the selected operating system boots up normally.

If you’re installing Windows 2003 on a machine that already has another Windows operating system, you will have to make sure that you can install Windows 2003 on a separate partition, or a separate hard drive, and not on the same hard drive or partition that already has another operating system on it — meaning two Operating Systems can’t share the same space at the same time.

The key is to install Windows 2003 last, this way the boot loader, which allows you to choose which Operating System to load at boot time, is installed by the XP installer. Please look up Microsoft’s article on multibooting at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306559

Since you have already installed two separate operating systems in your machine, you will have to manually delete one of them from the machine.

Before deleting, please make sure you backup all the important data from the hard disk. I hope you first installed Windows XP and then Windows 2003 server. Another point to consider is whether you installed Windows 2003 server in a separate partition or in the same partition where Windows XP resides.

If you installed Windows 2003 server in the same partition, you will have to be careful while deleting Windows 2003 folders. You should have two windows directories, such as windows and windows.001.

Please boot the System from Windows XP and delete the Windows directory corresponding to Windows 2003 server. You can also delete Program Files, Document and Settings Folder. You will have to remove the line for Windows 2003 server from the boot.ini file, which resides in C partition (C:\Boot.ini). You can use notepad to edit the boot.ini file.

The content of Boot.ini file will be along these lines: In this file the Windows 2003 server is installed in the second partition and it will also have the path of Windows XP

[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" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2003 server" /fastdetect

If you installed Windows 2003 server in a separate partition, the better way is to format that partition, if Windows 2003 is installed in the second partition, because MBR will be in the primary Active partition, which is used to load the boot.ini file.

To format the partition by using FDISK, please boot the system from the Win9x Startup Disk.

In the command prompt, type: FDISK /MBR, then type: SYS C:. then reboot the system.

Then you will have to remove the Windows 2000/XP/2003 files and folders.

When doing dual-booting, always keep a separate partition for each OS. Never install two or more operating systems on the same partition because it will create havoc with your Program Files folder.

Please look up http://www.petri.co.il/remove_windows_2000_xp_2003.htm, for more information.

Many third party tools are available on the Internet to manage multiboot operating systems, such as OSL2000. Using OSL2000, you can install, boot and manage up to 100 independent Operating Systems in your system.

A boot manager is a program that lets you have multiple operating systems. This is free downloadable software. You can download it from http://www.osloader.com/

Solution by V. Bharath Kumar

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