Question Details:

I have 2 SATA HD's in my computer. 1 has a Vista x86 install and came off another computer, the other drive has an install of x64 Vista. I have a dual-boot menu and can boot into either one, I removed the x86 option so I can boot directly into the x64 install but now i'm stuck deleting the x86 install, I basically want to wipe the entire drive.

I boot from the x64 CD and I delete the x86 partition. When I reboot i'm told the bootmgr is missing and I need to run the x64 CD to repair the startup in order to boot into Windows again.

The thing is when I reboot the x86 partition is magically restored and i'm back to square one again. The 'D' drive is the one i'm trying to dump. http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/6130/screenshot001qa6.jpg

Answer:

You can go to BootDisk.com and download software that will help. Copy it onto a floppy disk, restart your computer and go into the BIOS, set your boot priority to your floppy drive and restart again your computer with the disk inside.

The rest of the details here.

If you delete a partition using fdisk utility you will remove the entire data from a partition.

More details using fdisk are here.