Here's my little issue which I haven't found a resolution to yet. My laptop had Vista and XP on a dual boot, and to remove Vista I used the vista boot load program to remove Vista from the boot menu, and then I went into XP and formatted the Vista partition, which is now empty. Now, I am also trying to reformat my XP partition, but in order to access that the Vista Boot Loader must be gone so it can access the hidden partition (Acer laptop..) How should I go about removing this boot loader successfully without messing anything else up? Thanks!
If you received or made a CD of the operating system, just wipe the drive with fdisk, including the MBR and then do a full format (not quick version). You should then be able to do a fresh install of XP. You may need to download a slew of drivers before you get it working 100% correctly. If you don't have an older version of windows or DOS around to do the job you may need to download and burn a boot cd of the ultimate boot disk (free).
Step 1: Boot your PC from a Bootable Windows XP CD. Step 2: Choose the partition to install the OS from the list. Step 3: Choose "Full Format" from the menu, and do a fresh install... Thats it... Your HDD would be formatted and Windows XP installed...
Thanks, but I can't do that. I have a default Acer MBR on the hard disk which is a hidden partition. By hitting Alt - F10, the restoration of XP can be done, which is precisely why I don't have a Win XP Cd to run...
I suggest boot the PC in Command Pompt... Use Hiren's Boot CD or Ultimate Boot CD. Use Command "fdisk/mbr". It ought to clear your MBR records IMO. Or maybe you may attempt to use disk partitioning tools like Nortan Partition Magic or Ranish Partition Manager. Just keep trying and let us know...
Thanks, looks like fdisk works! I did use partition software before but the boot info wasn't showing anywhere since I manually "removed" some of the files...