How to Cancel Dual Boot

Dual booting is the practice of booting up a computer with a hard drive containing two different operating systems on separate disk partitions. Dual booting can be advantageous to a user because it allows the flexibility of running two operating systems, such as Windows XP and Windows Vista or Windows XP with Linux or Mac OSX, on the same machine. If your computer has problems when dual booting, or you no longer need to dual boot, there are a couple of ways to cancel the process.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Cancel Dual Booting in Windows Startup Settings (Win XP)

1. Click "Start," then right click "My Computer," and select "Properties."

2. Click the "Advanced" tab.

3. Under "Start Up and Recovery," click "Settings" and be sure the operating system you want is set as the default operating system.

4. Click "Edit" and delete line in the boot.ini file associated with the second operating system that you don't want to boot. Save the file and close the windows.

Reformat to Stop Dual Booting (Win XP/Vista)

5. Click "Start," "Control Panel," "Administrative Tools," and then "Computer Management."

6. Click "Disk Management" on the menu on the left-hand side of the window.

7. Find the partition with your secondary operating system in the list, right click on it, and select "Format." Reformatting a partition will delete the operating system and all other files, so make sure you back up everything you need on the partition before reformatting.

Tips & Warnings

• Windows Vista does not have a boot.ini file that can be altered to change the boot listings. You can enter the "Start Up and Recovery Settings" in Vista in the same way as Win XP--see "Cancel Dual Booting in Windows Startup Settings (Win XP)" above--and reduce the "Time to to Display List of Operating Systems" to a few seconds to basically eliminate lag from dual booting.
• Dual booting is an advanced computer technique and should not be attempted unless you are comfortable with operating systems, hard drive formatting and partitioning. Back up important files before attempting to dual boot or cancel dual boot.

References

• Reformatting to cancel dual boot
• More on canceling dual boot
• Info on modifying boot.ini