remove old instance of windowsXp from second disk

[SteveF2]

I am reinstalling XP to disk1 (C. XP had been installed (by accident) on a
second disk D:. I have reformatted the second disk but when I restart my PC
it goes into a multiple OS page and asks which instance to boot.

How can I stop this and remove what is left of the second (old) instance of XP

Many thanks

 

[John John]

Run the msconfig utility, under the Boot.ini tab have it "Check all boot
paths" and it will offer to remove the invalid paths.

John

 

[SteveF2]

Thanks John that fixed it.

I now have a second problem with that drive. Partition magic reports that
the drive has bad mbr wheras Disk Management records it as healthy. I don't
currently boot from the drive.

What is the answer here?
Many thanks.

 

[John John]

That drive being your second (D hard disk?

Do you presently have any data on the drive?

Have you ever had a different boot manager installed on the drive?

Did the drive ever have a service partition on it?

John

 

[SteveF2]

Yes a second physical drive to that hosting windows.
I have no data on that drive and have recently reformatted it.
It has had a copy of windows installed on it in the past by mistake, never
been used for dual booth.
Not sure what you mean by service partition, only ever had a full disk
partition from new. Did develope a fault where only part of the disk
capacity was recorded in My Computer. Reverted to full disk after reformat.

Many thanks

 

[John John]

It's a bit hard to know what Partition Magic means by "bad mbr". It
could mean that the Boot Record or Executable Code is bad or that the
Partition Table is bad. Or it could be that both are bad, or that PM is
just confused!

Here is what you can try:

Use the Disk Management tool and delete (all) the partition(s) on the
disk then recreate them. If the Partition Table had errors that should
clear them out.

If PM still thinks that there are errors, boot the computer to the
Recovery Console and use the CD command to change to the root of the D:\
drive and issue the fixmbr command on the disk. If the the Boot Record
was damaged that should fix it. You can do the same thing with a
Windows 98 boot disk and the fdisk /mbr command.

If PM still thinks that the MBR is bad after you do the above steps then
you can zero out the MBR and use the Disk Management tool to
reinitialize it, post again if you need to zero out the MBR.

John

 

[SteveF2]

That fixed it, delete and create partition seems to have corrected the error.

Many thanks John

Regards Steve

 

[John John]

You're welcome, thanks for the follow up.

John

That fixed it, delete and create partition seems to have corrected the error.

Many thanks John

Regards Steve


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