phantom XP partition

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one of my dumb kids infested my dell dimension 2400 with everyspyware program
known to man (and a few unknown ones). i tried washing them out, and
scrubbing them out, but the stains were still there. i ended up doing a clean
install of XP from the disks which i miracuously found in the attic. deleted
all partitions and built a single new NTFS partition and nestled XP snugly
therein. problem is, now when i boot, BIOS thinks there are 2 OSs on the disk
and asks me to choose the one i want to boot from. one works (i'm assuming
this is the newly installed version), the other doesnt (i'm assuming it's a
ghost of the old OS rattling around like Jacob Marley). how can i get rid of
Marley's ghost?
 
RiderDude said:
one of my dumb kids infested my dell dimension 2400 with everyspyware program
known to man (and a few unknown ones). i tried washing them out, and
scrubbing them out, but the stains were still there. i ended up doing a clean
install of XP from the disks which i miracuously found in the attic. deleted
all partitions and built a single new NTFS partition and nestled XP snugly
therein. problem is, now when i boot, BIOS thinks there are 2 OSs on the disk
and asks me to choose the one i want to boot from. one works (i'm assuming
this is the newly installed version), the other doesnt (i'm assuming it's a
ghost of the old OS rattling around like Jacob Marley). how can i get rid of
Marley's ghost?
Click to expand...

What makes you think it's the BIOS that sees two
partitions? Wouldn't be the WinXP boot loader instead,
having two menu lines (not two partitions)? Try this:

- Click Start / Run
- Type notepad c:\boot.ini
- Get rid of the offending line
 
|>one of my dumb kids infested my dell dimension 2400 with everyspyware program
|>known to man (and a few unknown ones). i tried washing them out, and
|>scrubbing them out, but the stains were still there. i ended up doing a clean
|>install of XP from the disks which i miracuously found in the attic. deleted
|>all partitions and built a single new NTFS partition and nestled XP snugly
|>therein. problem is, now when i boot, BIOS thinks there are 2 OSs on the disk
|>and asks me to choose the one i want to boot from. one works (i'm assuming
|>this is the newly installed version), the other doesnt (i'm assuming it's a
|>ghost of the old OS rattling around like Jacob Marley). how can i get rid of
|>Marley's ghost?

You didn't do a clean install, the boot.ini has both systems listed
now.
Start | Run | MSCONFIG <enter>
goto boot.ini and click on - check boot paths.

Or edit the extra OS out of C:\boot.ini
 
RiderDude said:
one of my dumb kids infested my dell dimension 2400 with everyspyware program
known to man (and a few unknown ones). i tried washing them out, and
scrubbing them out, but the stains were still there. i ended up doing a clean
install of XP from the disks which i miracuously found in the attic. deleted
all partitions and built a single new NTFS partition and nestled XP snugly
therein. problem is, now when i boot, BIOS thinks there are 2 OSs on the disk
and asks me to choose the one i want to boot from. one works (i'm assuming
this is the newly installed version), the other doesnt (i'm assuming it's a
ghost of the old OS rattling around like Jacob Marley). how can i get rid of
Marley's ghost?
Click to expand...

Sounds like you did a parallel install and there still might be nasties
left around. Recommend you look at doing a clean install. See this link:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
 
thanks to you all for your helpful posts. i ended up editing boot.ini in
notepad from the properties dialog. it was:

[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="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect


and i changed it to:

[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="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition"

working fine now.

thanks again
 
|>Only one hard drive with one partition and setup as primary master
|>and booting from HD(0)??
|>
|>A Clean install would not give a dual boot option!!
|>
|>Scroll down to #20
|>http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/xpfaq.html

What if he doesn't have a working browser and can only use his
Newsreader?

|>"RiderDude" wrote:
|>
|>> one of my dumb kids infested my dell dimension 2400 with everyspyware program
|>> known to man (and a few unknown ones). i tried washing them out, and
|>> scrubbing them out, but the stains were still there. i ended up doing a clean
|>> install of XP from the disks which i miracuously found in the attic. deleted
|>> all partitions and built a single new NTFS partition and nestled XP snugly
|>> therein. problem is, now when i boot, BIOS thinks there are 2 OSs on the disk
|>> and asks me to choose the one i want to boot from. one works (i'm assuming
|>> this is the newly installed version), the other doesnt (i'm assuming it's a
|>> ghost of the old OS rattling around like Jacob Marley). how can i get rid of
|>> Marley's ghost?
 
RiderDude said:
one of my dumb kids infested my dell dimension 2400 with everyspyware
program known to man (and a few unknown ones). i tried washing them
out, and scrubbing them out, but the stains were still there. i ended
up doing a clean install of XP from the disks which i miracuously
found in the attic. deleted all partitions and built a single new
NTFS partition and nestled XP snugly therein. problem is, now when i
boot, BIOS thinks there are 2 OSs on the disk and asks me to choose
the one i want to boot from. one works (i'm assuming this is the
newly installed version), the other doesnt (i'm assuming it's a ghost
of the old OS rattling around like Jacob Marley). how can i get rid
of Marley's ghost?
Click to expand...


I can't tell what your problem is from the description you've provided, but
I can assure you that the BIOS doesn't
"think there are 2 OSs on the disk." The BIOS doesn't know anything about
operating systems or how many there are, and it's not the BIOS that's asking
you choose the one to boot from; it's the Windows boot loader.

If the boot loader is giving you a choice of two operating systems, there
are two lines in boot.ini describing the two choices. So your statement that
you deleted all partitions, built a new one, and installed Windows on it
cleanly can't be correct. If you had done that, boot.ini wouldn't reference
two Windows choices.
 
here's what i did:
i booted from the XP disks. when it asked me to choose a partition, i
deleted all the partitions that were listed, created a new NTFS partition,
and told it to install XP there. OK, i now understand that it's XP's boot
sequence that thinks there are 2 OSs, and not BIOS. guess i thought it was
BIOS b/c it's in the B&W screen. (after thinking about it for a minute,
though, i realize that's dumb since it goes through the dell bios boot and
then pops out before getting that screen)
in any case, you've now made me concerned that my edit to boot.ini only
makes xp think there's only one OS, but in fact, there really IS another
partition. could that be?
thanks
 
You may be a little unclear about the concepts "OS" (Operating
System) and "Partition".

Windows XP is an operating system. Most people have exactly
one OS on their PC. In the vast majority of all cases it is installed
on drive C:. How many OSs do you think you have on your PC?
Which drive(s) are they installed on?

A partition is a fenced-off area of the hard disk. Most PCs
have a single hard disk with a single partition. Some PCs have
a single hard disk with two partitions: One for the OS, one for
data. How many partitions do you have? Run diskmgmt.msc
from Start / Run to see your own partitioning scheme.

If you are still confused about OSs and partitions on your
hard disk, answer the above questions in your reply.
 
thanks, i'm clear on disks, partitions and OSs. sorry - i reread my reply
below and see that i was unclear. my concern was that there really are
currently 2 partitions on the disk, one with the newly installed xp on it and
the other with some remnants of the original, corrupted xp, and that all i
did by editing boot.ini was to remove the choice screen during the boot
sequence. i ran diskmgmt as you suggested and now confirm that there is one
partition.
thanks for all the help.
 
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