XP Home Edition Startup: OS Selection?

[Kolchak]

So when I start my computer, I get a screen that
says: "Please select one of the operating systems to
start: Windows XP Home Edition or Microsoft Windows"
This is accompanied by a 30 second countdown to
automatically start the highlighted selection (XP). My
question is this: is there a way that I can stop this
little annoying delay in startup? I would like to make
XP the default (and only) OS in use.

 

[Guest]

You sure can! Open folder options in control panel. Click on view tab, uncheck Hide folders also uncheck the 2 below refering to system files. Then open your C: drive and you should see a file called Boot.ini First right click it and go to properties and uncheck read only click ok. Then open it using Notepad, once open you'll see something along the following

[boot loader
timeout=3
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW
[operating systems
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetec

Except yours will have a couple more lines refering to the second option to boot to, this is most likely the recovery councel which you can edit from your boot.ini with out much worry as long as you know how to reinstall it when you need it

 

[DE]

So when I start my computer, I get a screen that
says: "Please select one of the operating systems to
start: Windows XP Home Edition or Microsoft Windows"
This is accompanied by a 30 second countdown to
automatically start the highlighted selection (XP). My
question is this: is there a way that I can stop this
little annoying delay in startup? I would like to make
XP the default (and only) OS in use.

Control Panel, System, Advanced, Startup&Recovery, shorten the time to
choose, or remove the old Windows install as an option by editing the file.

-- DE