Hi all,

I was re-installing XP Home on someone's machine today and ran into a problem.
At the first reboot of the install, after the format, I didn't have the hard
drive and cd-rom drive in the right order, and the machine entered setup
again. Rather than shutting it off right then, I just went through the setup
again and at it's first reboot, caught it at the bios screen and pointed it
the right way. The install went fine after that.

Now, however, the machine believes there are 2 installs of XP Home on the
machine and prompts me for a choice every boot up. I don't want to send the
machine back to them like this.

How can I remove that second partial install of XP safely?

Any hints would be appreciated.

Thanks

Modify the C:\Boot.ini and remove the secondary Windows XP entry. Also set
the default OS to prompt as well as if you want the Boot Menu to appear:

Control Panel | System | Advanced
In Startup Recovery section, click on Settings
Click on the dropdown list arrow under System Startup section ... you will
see your boot options
Click on Edit
Remove the line that duplicates the Windows XP OS entry
Click File | Save
Click File | Exit

Uncheck Time to Display list of operating systems

While you're there, under System Failure, you might as well uncheck
Automatically restart. That way, if the system ever crashes on bootup, you
won't stay in a vicious cycle or rebooting/crashing/rebooting/crashing ....

"Chester" <u27655@uwe> wrote in message news:677b56fe0e9e5@uwe...
> Hi all,
>
> I was re-installing XP Home on someone's machine today and ran into a
> problem.
> At the first reboot of the install, after the format, I didn't have the
> hard
> drive and cd-rom drive in the right order, and the machine entered setup
> again. Rather than shutting it off right then, I just went through the
> setup
> again and at it's first reboot, caught it at the bios screen and pointed
> it
> the right way. The install went fine after that.
>
> Now, however, the machine believes there are 2 installs of XP Home on the
> machine and prompts me for a choice every boot up. I don't want to send
> the
> machine back to them like this.
>
> How can I remove that second partial install of XP safely?
>
> Any hints would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks
>

"Chester" wrote

> Hi all,
>
> I was re-installing XP Home on someone's machine today and ran into a
> problem.
> At the first reboot of the install, after the format, I didn't have the
> hard
> drive and cd-rom drive in the right order, and the machine entered setup
> again. Rather than shutting it off right then, I just went through the
> setup
> again and at it's first reboot, caught it at the bios screen and pointed
> it
> the right way. The install went fine after that.
>
> Now, however, the machine believes there are 2 installs of XP Home on the
> machine and prompts me for a choice every boot up. I don't want to send
> the
> machine back to them like this.
>
> How can I remove that second partial install of XP safely?
>
> Any hints would be appreciated.


Are there actually two different installations on the system or does the
system just think that? Can you boot into either one or does one give an
error?

If there are actually two different installations see this article for how
to remove one, though it's probably best to just reinstall, deleting the
partition then installing a clean copy.

"I have two installations of XP on the same partition........"
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/xpfaq.html#020

If there is only one installation and one of the entries in the boot loader
menu doesn't work, then boot into the working installation, go to Start |
Run. Type in msconfig, click ok. On the boot time click on "Check all boot
paths". It will find the invalid one and offer to delete it.

--

Rock [ MVP User/Shell]

Open the System Configuration Utiity THEN click the "Boot.ini" Tab THEN
click the "Check All Boot Paths" button. If an invalid boot path [as it
should be in your described case] accept the offer to remove it. To open the
System Configuration Utility: Start/Run/type "msconfig" (less the quotation
markers) and click "OK".
Gene K