removing first XP partition from XP/2008R2 dual boot

[Fark_Maniac]

I thought I needed to dual boot XP and 2008R2 since my scanner is no longer supported...but I'm not going to go out and buy one. It turns out, 2k8r2 sees the scanner and an XP virtual machine can use the scanner, so I don't really need the dual boot.

I tried playing with 2k8r2's disk management stuff, but that didn't really do what I wanted. I've never really messed with partitioning software.

Disk Management, for the XP partition shows (System, Active, Primary Partition)
The 2008R2 partition shows (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

I created the XP partition first, then the 2008R2. I'm really scared if I delete the XP partition, my 2008 will become unbootable. I'd like to expand my 2008 to the size of both partitions. Though even if I could just format the XP partition and use it for VM files, I'd be happy too.

Help?

 

[xenios]

From what you typed the 2008r2 partition is the boot partition so you should be fine.

if the xp partition was the boot partition then yes, if you delete that partition you will not beable to boot. but it is easily fixed. When you delete the partition boot from the installation media and "repair" the installation in most cases it will see that the bootloader is missing and will fix the problem. If for some reason that doesnt work you can still fix the problem by using the command line tool bootrec.exe.