boot.ini after hard drive reformat

[Guest]

recently had to reformat my hard drive, and the boot.ini file now has 2
partitions on it, presumably one is the old install of xp, one the new.

how do i know which one to get rid of? If i go toboot.ini via msconfig and
click check all boot paths for each it says it is invalid. boot.ini file
looks like this:-

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

 

[D.Currie]

recently had to reformat my hard drive, and the boot.ini file now has 2
partitions on it, presumably one is the old install of xp, one the new.

how do i know which one to get rid of? If i go toboot.ini via msconfig
and
click check all boot paths for each it says it is invalid. boot.ini file
looks like this:-

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin

First, if you actually formatted your whole drive, you couldn't have ended
up with 2 installations of XP. Unless you ran the install twice. And you
wouldn't have 2 partitions unless you had them earlier, or you created them
when you installed XP, either by wiping everything and recreating
partitions, or by allocating some unused space that you had on the drive.
Only you know what you did or didn't do.

At this point, the question should be whether you actually have 2 partitions
on the hard drive (you don't have partitions on your Boot.ini as that's just
a file) and if so, which one is the one you want to use. The default is the
one that boots automatically, but do you know if the second one exists? Or
do you really want a dual boot? Or would you like to start over and delete
all the partitions and start over?

You may just have an extra line in the boot.ini that can be deleted, but
that's really not a big deal. But if you actually have another partition
that you don't want to have, deleting that line doesn't do anything to the
partition, it just deletes the reference to it in the boot sequence. You'd
still have the partition.

 

[AJR]

As stated in the previous response - your boot.ini file indicates two
partitions with XP installed in each. You can delete one entry - and its
corresponding XP installation if you wish - however you need to determine
the default OS - which is usually the first listed. To verify default:
RtClick My computer>Properties>Advanced tab>Startup and recovery
option>Settings - default XP will be listed at the top -boot.ini can be
edited by selecting "Edit" option.

 

[barrymcclinton]

Thanks for your replies.

I am pretty sure I only installed XP once (would have thought it would
be difficult to do it more than once) - and I followed the instructions
to format the whole drive.

However, have now looked in My Computer and its only showing 125gb of
my 200ish gb harddrive on C (there are no other drives listed apart
from cd rom etc)

Alos lookedin computer management and it has 130gb as a partition on C:
with the words Healthy (system) and a further 60odd gb of "unused
space". Does this mean I have somehow managed to put XP on a
partition?

Before I had to reformat, I am pretty sure all my space was under C in
my computer. How do I undo whatever I have done?