Multiple Operating System at boot?

[Frederick]

I am forced to choose between two identically described operating
systems during bootup on my XP SP3 machine. I have seen this before
on other machines, due to my choice of system installation method. I
have always been able to correct (eliminate) the superfluous one by
editing the boot.ini file. This time, however, the ini file has only
one system choice, and so there is nothing to correct.

What am I missing?

Thank you

BF

 

[philo]

I am forced to choose between two identically described operating
systems during bootup on my XP SP3 machine. I have seen this before
on other machines, due to my choice of system installation method. I
have always been able to correct (eliminate) the superfluous one by
editing the boot.ini file. This time, however, the ini file has only
one system choice, and so there is nothing to correct.

What am I missing?

Thank you

BF

This might work:

run msconfig and have it check for invalid boot options



http://windowsxp.mvps.org/bootopt.htm

 

[Paul]

I am forced to choose between two identically described operating
systems during bootup on my XP SP3 machine. I have seen this before
on other machines, due to my choice of system installation method. I
have always been able to correct (eliminate) the superfluous one by
editing the boot.ini file. This time, however, the ini file has only
one system choice, and so there is nothing to correct.

What am I missing?

Thank you

BF

Another possibility, is you're looking at the wrong copy of boot.ini .

If you have two partitions, with WinXP on each one, you could
actually be using the boot.ini of the other partition.

Look carefully at Disk Management, and note the notation of the
various partitions. Notations such as "System", "Boot", "Pagefile".

When cloning disks, the first time you boot the cloned copy, you
should disconnect the original disk. Otherwise, the clone sees
the Pagefile on the original disk, and gets very confused. You'll
also notice the partition lettering is all screwed up if that
happens. Once the clone has been booted by itself, just the
one time, you can shut down and connect the other disks back
up, and at that point, the clone is no longer sensitive to
the issue. It's only during the first boot of the clone,
that bad things happen.

Paul

 

[John Smith]

I am forced to choose between two identically described operating
systems during bootup on my XP SP3 machine. I have seen this before
on other machines, due to my choice of system installation method. I
have always been able to correct (eliminate) the superfluous one by
editing the boot.ini file. This time, however, the ini file has only
one system choice, and so there is nothing to correct.

What am I missing?

Add it too the boot.ini in [operating systems] partition(2)
\WINDOWS="Windows" or \WINDOWS="Dam I see it"

Reboot and you see it


[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows"