Bootup choices necessary??

  • Thread starter Thread starter FERRANTE
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FERRANTE

When I boot up, It stops and asks me which operating system I want and
offers me three choices, which are: Windows 2000pro, Windows XP, and
something Dos, I forget actually. Well, I don't have Windows XP, even
though I did try and install it.

Is there a way to bypass this and always just go into Windows 2000
pro? If so, how?

Thanks,
Mark Ferrante
 
The simplest way is
START/SETTINGS/CONTROLPANEL/SYSTEM/ADVANCED(TAB)/STARTUP&RECOV
Set the default OS to Win2000. Set the display timeout to 1 or 0.

The system will boot automatically to the default. The boot menu
will be displayed, depending on your timeout setting, for one
second or not at all.

This will not disturb any unnecessary directories/files on your
hard drive. You will gain no free space.
 
The simplest way is
START/SETTINGS/CONTROLPANEL/SYSTEM/ADVANCED(TAB)/STARTUP&RECOV
Set the default OS to Win2000. Set the display timeout to 1 or 0.

The system will boot automatically to the default. The boot menu
will be displayed, depending on your timeout setting, for one
second or not at all.

This will not disturb any unnecessary directories/files on your
hard drive. You will gain no free space.
Click to expand...

One other question: I tried to install Windows XP a few days ago. It
would install up to a certain point, usually half-way through
Installing Plug and play devices, then the screen would go BLACK and
everything would stop. It did this every time I tried to install it,
always at the same point. I have only a 7 gig HD on this computer, but
I would think that is there was not enough room, it would tell you so.
Now when I go to Search files and folders, I have all kinds of WinXP
stuff there, but what good is it. How can I get rid of that without
screwing up my current system? WinXp files looks as if they have
incorporated themselves in many other files. Help, and thanks for the
tip above!

Mark
 
You can simply delete the WinXP directory/subdirectories and any
associated Temp install files to recover that space.

A small text file named "boot.ini" on your C: drive actually controls
the selection of which system to boot; if there's more than one option,
it throws up that boot menu. (You modified this file earlier, using the
control panel as suggested.) It's a hidden/readonly/system file; once
you remove those attributes (the ATTRIB command from the command prompt)
you should be able to see it in Explorer, and edit it with notepad. It
will tell you the exact names of the directories associated with each of
the 3 boot options you were seeing, and you can delete the directories
used by the boot options you don't want. Print it out so it's handy.

Be very careful not to delete the W2k directory you DO want.

Having done that, reboot the system a few times to make sure W2k boots
correctly and neither of the other options boots. When you're satisfied,
you can simply delete the boot.ini lines that point to the boot options
that no longer exist. The system loading process will then no longer
display any boot-choice menu at all; the default display time you see in
boot.ini will be irrelevant.

Best if you create a boot diskette first, with these steps:
1. format a floppy USING W2K.
2. copy to it these 3 files:
- boot.ini
- ntldr
- ntdetect.com
3. boot from that floppy to make sure you made it correctly.

Now you have a backup in case things go wrong.
 
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