Removing Vista?

[Eberhard Roloff]

Mike Adolf wrote:
> I have a dual boot, one drive, vista and Ubuntu 8.04.  I still have 
> occasion to use Windows, but vista is so bad, I want to reinstall XP 
> over it. Can this be done with out destroying my Ubuntu installation?
> 
> Mike
> 
sure, you just need to install XP to the partition that currently houses 
Vista. Should XP deny install, I would recomend to wipe the windows 
partition before the XP install, either at one of the first XP install 
screens or from Ubuntu. From Linux there are a multitude of options how 
to do this. I use cfdisk or gparted, just to name a few.

As Vista and XP do not have a common boot file, you will need to change 
the current vista entry of grub to an XP compatible entry. Personally I 
use RIP Linux and isomaster to extract sample grub entries for XP versus 
Vista.

Furthermore, the XP install will most likely erase your grub from the 
mbr (assuming that it is installed there).

So the very first thing to do is to save your mbr, so that you can 
install it after XP has been installed.

Should this short list not be clear, just ask.

Kind regards
Eberhard,

who changed from XP to Vista, then back to XP, from there to Ubuntu and 
I now arrived at using XP via virtualbox on Ubuntu.