BIOS OS selections

[Guest]

Not really a W2k question, but I thought I'd post this here (I have W2kPro loaded). A couple of years ago, I had Win98 on this computer (PII/350) and then loaded a demo of NT 4.0. Upon startup, after the BIOS check is nearly finished, the BIOS displays - Please select the OS you wish to use (or something to that effect) and has NT 4.0, NT 40.0 (non-VGA) and Win98 as the selections. When I loaded W2k, I nuked all the paritions and reformated the drive, but the OS selection remains (W2k is now in place of Win98) at the end of the BIOS check. I guess this is written into the boot sector of the HD. Is there some way to remove it

Thanks for any help

Bud

 

[Jeff]

Search for a file called boot.ini, all the info on that
screen should be in there.

You can edit it with notepad.

-----Original Message-----
Not really a W2k question, but I thought I'd post this

here (I have W2kPro loaded). A couple of years ago, I had
Win98 on this computer (PII/350) and then loaded a demo of
NT 4.0. Upon startup, after the BIOS check is nearly
finished, the BIOS displays - Please select the OS you
wish to use (or something to that effect) and has NT 4.0,
NT 40.0 (non-VGA) and Win98 as the selections. When I
loaded W2k, I nuked all the paritions and reformated the
drive, but the OS selection remains (W2k is now in place
of Win98) at the end of the BIOS check. I guess this is
written into the boot sector of the HD. Is there some way
to remove it?

 

[Bob I]

Sounds like you neglected to nuke the "boot" partition. You may want to
upgrade the BIOS also, based on the other question you posted about
shutdown/reboot.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

Simply edit C:\Boot.ini to remove the unnecessary line(s).

1) Click Start > Run, Type "Cmd" and then press <Enter>.

2) Type "Cd\" and then press <Enter>

3) Type "Attrib C:\Boot.ini -h -r -s" and then press <Enter>

4) Click Start > Run, Type "Notepad c:\boot.ini" and then press
<Enter>

5) Edit the file as desired, save it, and then exit Notepad.

6) Type "Attrib C:\Boot.ini +h +r +s" and then press <Enter>

7) Close the command console.


Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH

 

[Dan Seur]

Buddy - that boot-time menu is presented when the OS loader looks at a
small text file called boot.ini in the root directory of your system
partition (usually C. Boot.ini is a Hidden/Readonly/System file, so to
see it and edit it you must remove the H R S attributes. From a command
prompt, type "attrib /?" without the quotes to see the syntax of the
attrib command, or go to Start/Help/CommandReference.

The boot.ini file is easily edited with notepad. Its format and syntax
are simple. If you make a mistake, however, it can be a pain to recover
since without a good boot.ini you won't boot. Before editing, if you're
not sure what you're doing, format a floppy and copy to it the W2k files
ntldr,
ntdetect.com, and
boot.ini (as it is now.)
This diskette will be bootable into your existing W2k & let you correct
any mistake.

I'm pasting below a copy of my boot.ini. It's about as simple as it
gets. My machine only has W2k on it, boots from the first partition
(partition 1) on the Primary Master drive (drive 0) on the primary IDE
controller. If your machine does the same, and your W2k system directory
is \WINNT, this file will probably work for you. If your system
directory is something other than \WINNT, just change the \WINNT in both
entries.

You can remove any lines referring to systems that no longer exist, but
not the Timeout or Default lines. The timeout is simply skipped by the
OS loader when only one system is given, and you won't see the boot-time
menu any longer.

If you boot from a SCSI (or RAID) config, all bets are off. There's more
you need to do, and I can't detail it off the top of my head. Check the
W2k Help, the MS KnowledgeBase, or just google for "boot.ini" for help
with that.

You can test this boot.ini by preparing another floppy as above but with
this boot.ini on it instead. This is a 5-line simple ASCII text file;
there's only one line after [Operating System] so beware of the wordwrap.

[Boot Loader]
Timeout=5
Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect

Not really a W2k question, but I thought I'd post this here (I have

W2kPro loaded). A couple of years ago, I had Win98 on this computer
(PII/350) and then loaded a demo of NT 4.0. Upon startup, after the
BIOS check is nearly finished, the BIOS displays - Please select the
OS you wish to use (or something to that effect) and has NT 4.0,
NT 40.0 (non-VGA) and Win98 as the selections. When I loaded W2k,
I nuked all the paritions and reformated the drive, but the OS
selection remains (W2k is now in place of Win98) at the end of the
BIOS check. I guess this is written into the boot sector of the HD.
Is there some way to remove it?

 

[Guest]

I searched for the boot.ini file, but couldn't find it. I'm going to try another clean install of Win2k Pro, this time nuking the boot parition. But I need help - the Win2k setup will not allow one to nuke(re-parition) the 8MB boot sector. I think I may have an old DOS disk, can it do it from there? It's been a while since I've dabbed into DOS

Bud

 

[Guest]

Bruce
You are the man... who has kept up on his A+ certification. THANK YOU.

Done deal. It took all of 90 seconds to complete. Now I need to deal with my power off problem. See other post

Bu

 

[Gerry Voras]

this file has attributes of hidden, system, and read-only.

I searched for the boot.ini file, but couldn't find it. I'm going to try

another clean install of Win2k Pro, this time nuking the boot parition. But
I need help - the Win2k setup will not allow one to nuke(re-parition) the
8MB boot sector. I think I may have an old DOS disk, can it do it from
there? It's been a while since I've dabbed into DOS.