Removing OS and Partition

[sinbad8508]

When I bought my computer, it was configured in a dual boot mode, with Win98SE on the C: drive and XP on what was labeled the F: drive (D and E are optical drives). Since that time I have installed Acronis OS Selector and Disk Director to permit me to reduce the size of the FAT 32 C: partition. This worked just fine. I now find that the original reasons for the dual boot (running certain software and hardware) are no longer important. I want to remove the Win98SE FAT 32 partition entirely. While it appears that Acronis OS Selector will do that, it also prompts me with the advice "This will remove all derived operating systems as well . . ." So I am now unsure whether or not this is a wise thing to attempt. The queston is whether or not I am correct in reading this prompt as advice that the XP OS will be removed along with Win98SE by Acronis OS Selector. If so I am prepared to live with the current configuraton, as I do not want to reinstall XP and all the other software on my F: drive.

I also have a secopnd related question. On my ususual compulsive cover to cover read of the latest edition of Maximum PC I saw an article on PE-Builder, so I made ready to create a fully bootable XP OS disk. All went well then I saw the reademe for PE Loader and the note that PE Loader disables winlogon.exe and smss.exe. The second question is whether installing PE Loader PEBuilder will somehow interfere with the Acronis OS Selector. Will the software I was planning to use as insurance my actually cause a problem which will prevent me from my first mission, which is to delete W98SE and the FAT 32 partition without forcing me to reformat the entire drive and reinstall XP and all other programs?

Any advice will be appreciated.

[Acronis Support]

Hello sinbad8508,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Management Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/).

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Concerning your questions:

1)
The warning you mentioned means that all OSes that were created from the parent one (in your case it is Win98SE) using the "Copy OS" feature (Please read chapter 7.12 "Copying operating systems" in our users guide (http://download.acronis.com/pdf/diskdirectorsuite9.0_ug.en.pdf)) would be deleted. This means that your installation of Windows XP would remain intact since it is not a copy of your Win98SE OS.

2)
Please note that Acronis OS Selector stores its bootable part in the MBR on the hard disk drive. So it will not interfere with any bootable disk you boot from.

Thank you.
--
Semyonov Vasily