The date and time was 1/4/2008 3:52 AM, and on a whim, DRTP pounded out
Hi,
During re-installation of Windows XP Prof I have ended up with multiple
versions in the computer from which which I have to select one on re-booting.
Can you please let me how to clean up the system or format it so that I can
re-install and end up with just one version of the operating system.
Currently I am getting an error message when I try to format the disk.
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
DRTP
Do you have multiple partitions (on drives C: D:, etc) or multiple
Windows folders (Windows, Windows1, Windows2) on the C: drive?
Start Windows Explorer, go to Tools, Folder options, View, and in
Hidden Files and Folders select "Show hidden files and folders".
Click OK.
In Explorer, click on My Computer, C: and find boot.ini in the
right-hand pane. Right click, select Properties, untick "Read-only",
click OK.
Right click boot.ini again, select Open with and choose Notepad or
Wordpad from the list of programs given.
Then add unique identifiers to distinguish the different Windows:
i.e.
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /fastdetect
would become
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional #1" /fastdetect
etc.
Save the file, set the Read-only property again and reboot - the
WINDOWS menu items will now no longer be identical and you can
distinguish which is wanted/unwanted.
Remove the offending lines from your boot.ini (just get the right
ones), (back it up first). Then you need to remove the extra OS's.
You can Format each partition as mentioned, or you could just
delete all the folders in each one.
Or you could use a utility to remove the old partitions (if that's what
they were) and resize the existing to make it larger. Read about that here:
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/partitioneditors.shtml
Just be sure to BACKUP first AND verify the data before any of these tasks.
--
Terry R.
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