Tech Help

[Rob Q]

Do you want to upgrade or just remove?

[Rob Q]

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/cook/uninstall.htm

[George]

[quote="Sean Hogan"]How do I remove Windows 2000 from a drive on my desktop PC?

[Sylv]

[img]http://www.testandtry.com/wp-content/uploads/computer-out-window.jpg[/img]

[Snoop Doug]

hit it with a hammer

[Phil H]

So, do you have both operating systems appearing as boot options? And are they on separate logical/physical drives (different drive letters if you prefer).

You can remove it as a boot option by editing the hidden/system file C:\boot.ini First you have to make it visible and editable by going to a command prompt and, in the root of the C: drive entering "attrib boot.ini -r -s -h". Then you can just edit with notepad - e.g. "notepad boot.ini". Before you do that, it might be an idea to make a backup of it ("copy boot.ini boot.ini.backup"). You will have a couple of lines like:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect /noexecute=optout

Delete the line(s) you don't want. Don't mess with the ones you do want. Save the file and restore the attributes with "attrib boot.ini +r +h +s".

Once you've done that - and rebooted to make sure all is OK - if it's a separate drive you can reformat it or just remove the files. IIRC, Win2K installs to the \WINNT directory by default whereas XP installs to C:\WINDOWS. Obviously you don't want to reformat your C: drive - that would be bad.

And you might want to check that you have your XP disk handy just in case anything goes badly wrong.