Removal of Dual Boot ME/W2K Prof

[cold1s]

I have a Dell 8100 Inspiron that came preloaded with ME. Someone at my office offered to upgrade the laptop to W2K. I want to remove ME from the system, where to start???

 

[butchrecon]

Are you upgrading or installing a full version of Win2K? If it is a full version, is there anything on the laptop you want to keep? Then go to Dells website and get 2000 drivers for your laptop. Fdisk the drive and remove then recreate the partitions. Once that is done (can also be doen when you boot from the Win2K cdrom and go through the install process.) Format NTFS and instal Windows 2000. James Collins
Field Service Engineer
A+, MCP

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

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[cold1s]

Thanks for the reply James,
The Full version of W2K was used but the option to upgrade was chosen instead of a clean install now I think it has both OS on the laptop. I want to keep W2K and remove the ME copy

 

[bgauntt]

If you use Partition Magic boot disks you can remove just that partition.

 

[NeitchBob]

I am reading this thread to solve my problem as well. I need to remove winME from my system. I installed win2k ....now I have a choice at boot up. Please advise.

 

[Chrissirhc]

yeah there is a file where it says what system should do when booting up. I posted a similar question previously. When I find this file I'll post back you will have to delete one line and clear up disk space you could then delete the old winme folder.

 

[Chrissirhc]

Yeah its the bootini file. You delete the line that points to the ME operating system.

I'm not sure what to do about upgrades though. And I wouldn't just go ahead and do it unless you know what I talking about.

 

[jaeddy]

Okay, if you *upgraded* from ME to Win2K, the ME installation is now gone so you can stop worrying about that. If you are in a situation where you are dual -booting between ME and 2000, that's a bit more problematic.

First, the assumption I am making is that ME was installed first and it resides on the C drive. 2000 was installed second and resides either on the C drive or (hopefully) on another partition, and you are using 2000's boot loader to select your OS.

Yes, you can edit the ME option out of boot.ini and delete the folder containing ME, but any applications installed under ME will remain in the Program Files folder- you ought to dispose of that as well, *except* if you installed 2000 on the same partition as ME in which case they are sharing that folder and things get a little stickier. You see where I am going here?

If the two OS's are installed on separate partitions the clean-up is relatively straight-forward. There will always be left-over junk, but nothing of any note. If they share the same partition your best bet is to do a clean reinstallation of the OS you want to keep.