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Multiple partitions in one hard disk

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by maojn

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I was trying to install a windows xp with chinese as primary language over my existing english xp. But somehow a chinese xp partition was added to the english xp partition instead of write over it. now I have 2 xp in one hard disk. Is it ok? How can I get rid of the english xp or both of them to let only chinese xp exist? I used the 'delete partition' in the xp setup cd but it said the setup is currently using files in this partition and can't delete this partition.

Thank you very much for help.

2 replies

by sgt_shultz

yes you can have both. it is perfectly fine and congratulations for getting that far. because chinese needs more bits to represent the vast character set, you cannot have both installations live on the same partition. you are stuck with one or the other or both and 2 partitions.

by vryce

If you want to delete one of the partitions, boot into the one that's not in use, then use disk management to reformat (or delete/unallocate) the other partition. Be careful about being able to boot after doing this (since you say the partition you don't want was created first and will have your ntldr, etc).

If you don't have the option to choose which install to use, edit c:\boot.ini
You should see a line with "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)..."
Make a copy of this line but change the partition to (2), you may also want to change the label.
then set "timeout=30"

If for some reason the second installation is actually using files from the first, I think you'd be better off formatting the entire disk and starting over.

Hope this helps.

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