delete one os from dual boot

[xzimppledink]

Back up computer dual boots with XP and vista. For unknown reasons MS decided my copy of vista was "already in use" and gave me 30 days to buy another key, that was 30 days ago. Why they did this is a mystery, I bought it 2 years ago from Staples and still have the receipt. At any rate it blacked out today and I want to remove it without removing the XP os on the same HD. I'm Replacing it with SuSE 11.2. Not sure how to proceed. With single boot I"d simply killdisk the HD, reformat, and load the new OS. This isn't quite so simple and a mistake would be disasterous.

 

[deanj20]

Is it out of the question to back up all of your personal data and completely format the drive, then reinstall XP and SuSe?

Actually, I would call MS and let them know that I had the receipt for my Key from Staples and that just b/c someone "faked my key" it doesn't make it OK for them to cheat me out of an OS I paid good money for - Maybe (if they can somehow tie your receipt to your key) they'll give you a new key for free?

But if you want to install SuSe anyway, I believe that you can boot from the SuSe CD and run cfdisk and delete your Vista partition, format it, then make a swap partition and the rest w/ ext3 fs. Then install SuSe normally. But I don't know what boot manager you were using before - you'll have to make changes to that as well.

I would back up anything you simply can't live without before messing with anything - just in case (as a rule of thumb, you should have 3 copies of anything that important anyway.)