2 copies of Windows

[Brian]

After doing what I believed to be a clean install of
Windows XP I now seem to have 2 copies. When my PC starts
up it gives me a choice between 2 copies of XP, only one
of which works.
How can I reinstall XP totally clean, with a newly
formatted hard drive?

 

[Frank]

All you have to do is to determine which windows folder is the one that
doesn't work and delete it. Then go to tools>folder options go to the view
tab and uncheck "hide protected operating sytem file" and click ok. Then go
to the c: drive and look for the boot.ini file. Open it up in wordpad and
delete the entry that refers to the deleted windows folder.
You will then not get a menu while booting.

 

[Brian]

I only have one C:/WINDOWS folder and a search of the
entire C: drive did not find a single boot.ini file?

 

[Unnamed]

After doing what I believed to be a clean install of
Windows XP I now seem to have 2 copies. When my PC starts
up it gives me a choice between 2 copies of XP, only one
of which works.
How can I reinstall XP totally clean, with a newly
formatted hard drive?

You don't need to reinstall if the other one works fine. Just look for
boot.ini in C: and delete the offending boot line in it. Then, clean up any
leftovers from the other install.

Alternatively, if you feel you MUST reinstall and aren't using a restore
disk, then just boot off the XP CD, get it to format and then install,
problem solved.

 

[Unnamed]

I only have one C:/WINDOWS folder and a search of the
entire C: drive did not find a single boot.ini file?

You have to change folder options to SHOW protected and system files etc
first.

 

[Ron Martell]

After doing what I believed to be a clean install of
Windows XP I now seem to have 2 copies. When my PC starts
up it gives me a choice between 2 copies of XP, only one
of which works.
How can I reinstall XP totally clean, with a newly
formatted hard drive?

Use Start - Run - MSCONFIG and go to the BOOT.INI tab.
Click on the "Check all boot paths" button.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."