There’s a laptop with just 4GB of HD space. It has Win 98 and Win 2000 and you can choose which one to boot at start-up. I really need to free some space, so I am thinking of removing Win 98. How can I do that?
The quick and dirty way is to just delete the C:\WINDOWS directory (or whatever you installed 98 to if you didn’t use the default) then edit the hidden system file C:\BOOT.INI and remove 98 from the startup menu. You’ll leave a few system files behind, but not much.
BOOT.INI is a hidden system file with read only permissions. You will have to set your folder view to see hidden system files, and will have to change it temporarily to read/write instead of read only. There will be a line for each OS and a line setting the timeout for the menu.
If the command prompt gives you the willies, there’s a way to edit the boot menu from 2000. They keep moving this around in every version of NT so I can’t remember where it is (somewhere under the control panel), which is why I always just edit the BOOT.INI file instead.
in boot.ini don’t forget to change the numbers
that is
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
One of those numbers will be changed for dual boot. (Though I forget which.)
I think rdisk will be a 1 if the operating system you want to keep is the second one.
Either way make sure it’s all 0’s then a 1