How to Remove an Older Version of Windows XP

Remove the Old Installation Files
1. Click the “Start” button and click “Run” from the Start Menu.
2. Type “%windir%” in the text box and press “Enter” on your keyboard. Your current Windows operating system folder will appear.
3. Take note of the folder name. This is the folder you do not want to delete.
4. Close the folder and click “My Computer” on the Start Menu.
5. Double-click your main hard drive. This is usually “Local Disc C”.
6. Delete the old Windows installation folder on the hard drive. This will usually be named something such as “Windows”. Just be careful not to delete the folder that you took note of earlier. This has the operating system files inside and may have a similar name.
Remove the Old Installation from Startup Screen
7. Click the “Start” button to launch the Start Menu.
8. Right-click “My Computer” and choose “Properties” from the menu.
9. Navigate to the “Advanced” tab and click the “Settings” button.
10. Click the “Edit” button located under “System startup” to edit the “Boot.ini” file in the Notepad program.
11. Review the information in the file. You may see something like the following:multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\\WINDOWS=\'Microsoft Windows XP Professional\'
/fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\\WINDOWS.0=\'Microsoft Windows XP Professional\'
/fastdetect
12. Remove the second Windows XP entry. For example, you would delete this entire section:multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\\WINDOWS.0=\'Microsoft Windows XP Professional\'
/fastdetect
13. Click “File” from the top menu and select “Save.”
14. Click “OK” to close the “Startup and Recovery” window.
15. Reboot your computer to allow the changes to take place. When your computer restarts, it should no longer force you to choose which version of Windows XP to launch. Also, all files belonging to the old version of Windows XP will have been removed.