Vista: How to Uninstall Vista on Dual Boot Machine

Contributor Icon Contributed by MickeyMouse Date Icon November 2, 2005  
Tag Icon Tagged: Microsoft Vista

So you have vista on your dual-boot? As vista has its own bootloader, you’ll need to follow these steps to remove it.


Dual-booting with vista can be a little tricky to remove because of the new bootloader.

Playing with dual-boot systems has killed many people’s hard drives. I would suggest massive back-ups before you try to remove part of a dual-boot system. If you mess up, you might be unable to boot to any of your partitions. You do this at your own risk.

Here’s the basic steps you need to do:

    1. Backup, backup, backup
    2. Reboot and Boot to your XP CD-ROM
    3. Start the Recovery Console
    4. Run Fixboot
    5. Run fixmbr to reset the master boot record
    6. Exit the Recovery Console
    7. Reboot
    8. To remove the extra entry, edit the boot.ini file to remove the “Microsoft Windows Longhorn” entry.
    9. Format Your Vista Partition
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  • Anonymous
    My problem isn't getting rid of vista and removing the leftover bootloader, as I always have to go back into the recovery console as you mentioned. My problem is after deleting I have a Vista Image file saved using Acronis True Image. Then when I go to restore the Vista image on a seperate NTFS partitian I'm unable to boot into it because the bootloader isn't restored. Anyway to reverse this process.
  • Anonymous
    its not too easy to restore the bootloader but you could run
    BOOTCFG /REBUILD
    from the recovery console to add it to the boot.ini file and boot from it
  • Anonymous
    Please do not follow these instructions if you're trying to uninstall RC1. I did and am now re-installing XP...hoping my second partition will be available when I'm finished. No guarantees, but this sounds like it would have been the way to go: http://www.istartedsomething.com/20060622/insta...

    Good luck. It's a shame Vista at the RC1 level doesn't support more NIC drivers!
  • Anonymous
    <span style="text-decoration:underline">A step by step visual guide to uninstall windows vista beta/rc1 bootloader here :</span>

    :arrow: http://vista-uninstall-bootloader.freeware-alte...

    Thanks.
  • finally got this crap dual boot off my machine!.
    my fix was via the link in the comment above.
    visited it and downloaded Vistaboot pro 3.3.

    i was screwed cause i added vista on a 2nd partition. deleted it and the dual boot menu stayed. my other machine had the same issue. thing is I had the XP pro CD for my other machine so i did what this post mentions (FIXMBR and FIXBOOT) and no problem.
    this PC has XPhome and my other XP CD would not allow me into recovery.

    so dual boot with only XP OS. the Vistaboot pro 3.3. did the trick in 2 minues. removed VISTA from the menu, rebooted and went straight to my XP OS. thanks to anonymous for the program hint. the link in this comment is todownload the program, not my website :)
  • Finally
    Totally agree with relieved, finally found the solution!!!!!! No more dual boot log in
    found it here:
    http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/VistaBoot...
    Magic, it's done....
  • Uncle B
    Please donate your old boxes to a church-group or some needy student in these hard times! To comply with the law, and with Microsoft's leasing policy, you can now replace Microsoft OS with the free (download from the net) Ubuntu OS, which can be set to erase the hard drive of all traces of the “illegal to give away ” Microsoft system and your private information, before donation! Now, explain to your lucky recipient that all the manuals they will ever need are available for free on the internet! Just ask for them in Google! OpenOffice, which is installed already is plenty adequate for homework assignments and with a little exploring, everything else can work well too! Happy computing!
  • Name
    worked 100%

    had 3 partitions. deleted and formatted the partition with Windows 7 (Yes!) and fixed boot and mbr via recovery console

    and no more dual boot screen! Thankx!
  • kshitij
    hey hi...how did u do that.i have a triple boot laptop with xp,vista and win7 installed on it.i plan on uninstalling xp and vista once win7 rtm is officially released.how to remove vista and xp frm bootloader of win7.pls reply at hi.myself.devil@gmail.com
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