>Check out:
>
>http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/uninstall/winxp.htm, or search for "osuninst.exe" 
>from Google. There you'll even find pages at Annoyances.org.
>
>However, I have two OS installed on my computer -- 1 on each of two partitions (as 
>it should be, as this doesn't mess up each one's Registry, etc.). I just want to 
>remove XP, which was installed fresh on a separate partition (not on top of another 
>OS). The easiest was is to simply wipe and reformat the XP partition. However I 
was 
>concerned that this would leave the boot-up options (which let you choose which 
of 
>the OS to boot) intact and unabl;e to remove them. As it turned out, you can just 
>delete XP and worry about that later, though, as I describe below.
>
>1. Create a Win98 bootable floppy (format + copy system files)
>2. Copy c:\windows\command\attrib.exe and sys.com to the floppy
>3. Reboot using the floppy. Type A:\sys c: (if C: is the partition you want to keep 
>which has Win98 on it, and D: contains XP). This will restore the original booting 
>option to be Win98-only by restoring the system (i.e. bootup) files.
>4. (this step may not be necessary, though it won't hurt, either) You'll get an 
error 
>that it couldn't copy command.com. If so, then type "A:\attrib -S -H c:\comamnd.com", 
>"del c:\command.com" and "copy c:\windows\command.com c:\command.com"
>5. Reboot without the floppy. It should go straight to Win98 without the XP options 
>screen.
>6. Delete c:\boot.ini, ntdetect.exe and ntldr. These are hidden files, so you'll 
>have to make them visible first (View->Options->uncheck not displaying hidden files).
>7. Wipe and reformat your d: partition. Goodbye XP!
>
>-----------------
>
>Additional stuff I checked (just details, unnecessary for the removal of XP, but 
>left for completeness sake):
>
>Hence before deleting the partition (or running the directions from the link referenced 
>above) I wanted to first make the other OS the default OS in the bootup process. 
>This is done in WinXP Pro (and probably Home, too) as follows:
>
>- Right-click on "My Computer" and choose "Properties".
>- Select the "Advanced" tab.
>- Click the "Settings" button under "Startup and Recovery".
>- Change the drop-down list to the other OS.
>- (optional) change the "Time to display list of OS" to 0-2 seconds
>
>And then I discovered the "To edit the startup options file manually, click Edit" 
>button, which opens the "boot.ini" which is stored in the root directory of the 
active 
>(FDISK) partition. Voila!
>
>I discovered a bunch of other system files there, too, and made a copy of them. 
This 
>copy turned out to be important when I hadn't copied "sys.com" to the bootable floppy 
>and needed to reboot to Win98, but couldn't without these deleted files.
>
>I then tried to follow the link's instructions via MSDOS (for FAT partitions), and 
>that didn't work. From Safe Mode with Command Prompt it worked, but the program 
told 
>me that it couldn't uninstall XP because it didn't have the necessary registration 
>information. I didn't know what that was (and couldn't find out from the web), but 
>assumed that it meant that I had to activate my XP installation before I could uninstall 
>it. Gee. I didn't want to do that because of the annoying activation process, but 
>did so, anyway, to no effect. Then MS tech support told me how to do it, which are 
>the 8 steps I wrote at the top.
>
>- osuninst.exe will only work if XP was installed on top of another OS, i.e. not 
>if it was a clean install on a new partition. They mention that in the KB article 
>for the Add/remove programs option, but not for the osuninst.exe option.
>
>
>






Written in response to:
re: Question about 'How do I uninstall Windows xp?' (Christopher: Friday, July 26, 2002 at 2:09 pm)


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