Freezing after the first screen/ finding 2 installs of XP

[kplumm]

I have just managed to get XP on my Fujitsu Amilo laptop using a
recovery CD and an external CD drive after it was cabbaged by some
viruses - I've belatedly installed AVG - but when starting up, there
is a freeze on the screen that invites me to press F2 or F12, for Bios
and so on, which I can get out of by pressing esc or sometimes that
and a random bunch of keys.

Then I get a screen asking me to choose between 2 Windows Home
Editions; I had to manually remove the second one but I imagine there
is some kind of system file which I merely have to change or delete a
line within. Can someone steer me to the right place and tell me
what needs changing, or otherwise help.

I didn't wipe the hard drive and start from there, but everything else
is very satisfactory now even if I may have a few duplicate files
lying around from other User Accounts, etc and System Restores, etc.

Thanks in advance.

 

[RickC]

It is likely an extra system line in your boot.ini file. I can't see from
your post how that got added, but if you had been in recovery / repair it may
have happened then. You can see the boot.ini file if you use Windows
Explorer and go to Tools > Folder Options >View (tab) and uncheck "hide
protected operating system files" , apply it and exit. The boot.inin will be
in the root of the C drive. You cnan open it in Notepad and remove the extra
operating system line, then save as something like boot.txt. For an
operating system I'd surmise that you will need to boot from a disk and then
rename the old boot.inin something like boot.old and then rename the boot.txt
to boot.ini, but I'd search here and the knowledgebase for threads or
articles on modifying the boot.inin file first to make sure you don't do
anything that would mess up your boot process.

Hope this helps.