Uninstalling XP?

Question

How do I uninstall XP from a harddrive?

I had to replace my main hardrive today and fitted a new one but as I installed my recovery discI accidently installed xp on what was my back up harddrive. I didn't really think anything of it and then went and installed XP on my new hardrive. Now I can't make them recognise each other. I have a lot of software, music, photos on the other harddrive that I want to use. Can anyone help me remove XP from my old back up hardrive?

Answer 1

As long as you've made your new drive the master and set the boot priorities within the BIOS/CMOS to boot from it, you should be able to access the drive atleast in theory. Otherwise, because it was clean installation, the drive needs to be marked so that it will be accessible by Windows. In either situation, once it is set, you should be able to manually clean folders and files off of the backup drive that were accidently placed there during the installation.

You will be unable to do this automatically, because uninstalling XP is only available during a upgrade from Windows 98 for example. This does bring up another point, since the restore cd likely did a clean installation, it is quite possible that it formatted the drive during this process and this would delete all those music files and stuff. If this the case, your only means of retreival would be to download or purchase some recovery software. I've included a link below to some free software for recovery purposes if needed. If it didn't format the drive but instead copied the windows files over, well then you can manually remove those files. You did howver suggest that you were unable to access this drive while in windows, you would need to do the following to import or access it.

1 - Go to Control Panel from either Start menu ->Control Panel or My Computer->Change a Setting

2 - Depending on layout you'll have an icon for (Performance and Maintenance) or (Administrative Tools). If you have only Performance and Maintenance, open it and then Administrative Tools should be a sub-menu within it.

3 - Within Administrative Tools, find Computer Management and this should have a sub-level called Storage and a tool called Disk Management inside the Storage sub-level.

4 - Open Disk Management and a window will appear with al the physically attached drives to your computer. You may get a wizard screen asking to initialize the disks, that's fine, it won't delete anything. If you don't see your back up drive, you may have to goto the Action from the menu bar and select Rescan Drives.

5 - Now select the drive that you want to access, which is likely drive 1 not drive 0. If the drive status is Unknown, not Initialized or Foreign, right-click the drive and start the appropriate wizard. If the drive is functional with a status of Online (errors), Offline of doesn't have a drive letter, you'll have to right-click the drive volume to assign a drive letter or "Reactivate Disk".

If all goes well, you should be able to access the drive now. and delete specific folders such as Windows, Program Files and Documents and Settings. If you have problems where your access is being denied. There is either a program that is actively accessing something on the drive though unlikely or your current user account has insufficient rights to that drive and you'll have to "Take ownership"of specifc folders.

To take ownership of a folder, right-click the affected folder go to properties and there should be a Security Tab. If this doesn't appear, it is either disabled or you you're running XP Home edition, which I'm not really has this option.

If it is disabled which is default in XP Pro, you can re-enable it by opening My Computer, select tools from the menu bar and go to Folder Options. Towards the bottom there should be an option for Simplified File and Folder sharing or something like it, uncheck it. Now you should be able to right-click the affected folders, find its properties and go to the security tab.
From the Security tab there should be an Advanced button click it and a new window will appear. This window will have several tabs, select the owner tab, now you can change or add the current owner to that folder. You may have to check a box so that it replaces owners on sub-containers and objects as to ensure that it enforces it on to any child folders. I'm sorry for any details I'm missing, I'm running Vista on my machine, so there will be some slight differences. Feel free to email me with any questions.

Answer 2

Well that may be a problem if the installation reformatted the drive. All data is erased when that occurs, generally when XP gets installed it formats the drive.

Having xp installed on a backup drive wont keep you from reading the drive nor any data that might be there so that is not your issue. Check the drive settings and be sure your system is recognizing both drives before even booting. (Check at the CMOS/BIOS setup level. If both are being seen then access to both of them will be possible from within Windows.

Answer 3

you could not uninstall an working device consistent with say, like as you're able to on the different application. There are 2 ideas: one million) installation an OS on top of your present day one 2) Formatting your complicated force i individually do not want to circulate on because of the fact there are extra info mandatory. Do you have yet another OS to place in? Or do you have XP CD reachable?

Answer 4

unhook your main hard drive now unhook the backup drive there is a jumper pin make it the master drive.now hook it to the master connector cable. now go to your my computer and click it open go to drive c and left click on it and choose format this will erase the entire contents of the drive.
once this is done unhook it and switch the jumper back to slave and hook up your main hard drive as the master and the backup as the slave drive.

Answer 5

Go to,tools,/advanced(bottom left)click,reset.
Then go into start(btm left of youre screen)control panel..click,system restore,restore to a previous date,all data should be retrieved,then go to home page9youre home page)and synchronise? should work.
Good Luck.

Answer 6

Ensure that your backup drive is set as slave.