Removing vista without formating

Z

Zakter

Weaksauce
Joined
Dec 10, 2007
Messages
87
Hello,

A while back i tried to install Windows Vista on my secondary PC. When the setup finished it boots to a blue screen. See below for the blue screen error. I still have an install of Windows XP on this machine so i can at least boot up to XP via the boot menu. Now, what I would like to do is remove the Vista install if possible without formatting. Is this going to be remotely possible?





A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0x80603BB0, 0xc0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Zakter
 
It's definitely possible, but the steps will change based on how your drive(s) are set up, and where the actual boot files are located. Give some details about how your drives are partitioned.

Mainly, it will involve removing the Vista partition, and either running a repair install on the XP partition, or simply editing the boot.ini files to default to the XP install.
 
disksetup.jpg
 
I'm hoping I'm just misinterpreting the screenshot, but I hope you didn't try installing Vista to the very same partition as your XP install currently resides on. If so, honestly, I'd back up my data, wipe the drive clean and do a fresh install of XP. If you truly want both OSes, for a dual-boot system, you can easily follow the proper steps for doing so. This may be the cause of the errors and problems you've been getting.
 
STOP 0x0000007B is INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE, the sort of problem that sounds like it might have been caused by trying to run both OSes on the same partition.
 
Looks like you forgot to partition the HDD and installed XP and Vista to the same partition......

Wipe it clean and reinstall your choice, or partition before you start.

In reality HDD are so inexpensive right now, I'd just buy a second one and run XP on one and Vista on the other.
 
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