dont want dual boot

  • Thread starter Thread starter Al Botteon
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A

Al Botteon

I took a used Dell Dimension 2400, with xp home basic on it, deleted all
partitions, recreated a partition w/ntfs w/xp professional, and when all was
installed and I booted, the first screen was an operating system choice for
booting, either pro or home. Naturally when you clicked on home basic it
couldn't find it. How do I get rid of this dual boot screen. thanks.
 
Al Botteon said:
I took a used Dell Dimension 2400, with xp home basic on it, deleted all
partitions, recreated a partition w/ntfs w/xp professional, and when all was
installed and I booted, the first screen was an operating system choice for
booting, either pro or home. Naturally when you clicked on home basic it
couldn't find it. How do I get rid of this dual boot screen. thanks.
Click to expand...

Open C:\boot.ini in Notepad and edit out the extra line. Ensure Pro is the
default.
 
Al Botteon said:
I took a used Dell Dimension 2400, with xp home basic on it,
deleted all partitions, recreated a partition w/ntfs w/xp
professional, and when all was installed and I booted, the first
screen was an operating system choice for booting, either pro or
home. Naturally when you clicked on home basic it couldn't find
it. How do I get rid of this dual boot screen. thanks.
Click to expand...

In my opinion, John's reply is probably correct, but in order to see
BOOT.INI you will have to change file properties so that you can see
system files. Since you know how to manipulate partitions, if you
make a mistake with that file, you can redo everything. Also FWIW...
the BOOT.INI file can be accessed with certain recovery disks,
but you would have to know how to correct it.

Always keep a removable media copy of any important files from your
hard drive.
 
I said:
...in order to see BOOT.INI
Click to expand...

In case it matters, editing that file is not your neatest solution.
Obviously something is there that shouldn't be there. But editing
BOOT.INI might neatly cover it up.
 
John said:
In my opinion, John's reply is probably correct, but in order to see
BOOT.INI you will have to change file properties so that you can see
system files. Since you know how to manipulate partitions, if you
make a mistake with that file, you can redo everything. Also FWIW...
the BOOT.INI file can be accessed with certain recovery disks,
but you would have to know how to correct it.

Always keep a removable media copy of any important files from your
hard drive.
Click to expand...

Start:Run then enter MSCONFIG ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSConfig

When I looked in my boot.ini using that utility, there didn't
seem to be a delete option to remove the extra line in my file.

Paul
 
philo said:
The *safe* way to do it
is run msconfig
then go to the boot.ini tab
and opt for "check all boot paths"
it should be able to find the invalid entry
and ask if you want to delete it
Click to expand...

Cool.

Not that it matters, but. That still doesn't correct the cause for
BOOT.INI having the entry in the first place. The original poster did a
new install after apparently deleting all partitions. There must've
been something left that shouldn't be there.
 
Paul said:
John Doe wrote:
Click to expand...
Start:Run then enter MSCONFIG ?
Click to expand...

Editing the BOOT.INI file can easily keep you from getting back into
Windows XP.
When I looked in my boot.ini using that utility, there didn't
seem to be a delete option to remove the extra line in my file.
Click to expand...

The way I usually do it is through Control Panel -- System -- Advanced
-- Startup and Recovery.

My guess is that the option to delete would not exist unless there is
an invalid entry.
 
Paul said:
Start:Run then enter MSCONFIG ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSConfig

When I looked in my boot.ini using that utility, there didn't
seem to be a delete option to remove the extra line in my file.
Click to expand...

Since you did see the extra line, then it should be a simple affair to remove
it.

Experiment first by simply commenting it out -- put a semicolon followed by a
space at the beginning of the line. Reboot. If it works as you want, you can
either leave it like that or completely remove the line later.

The entry may still be there because the uninstall of XP Home left some remnants
of the old OS, and XP Pro was installed side-by-side with it somehow. If you
have 2 partitions or physical HDs, you may want to check for duplicate Windows
and support folders...
 
John said:
Cool.

Not that it matters, but. That still doesn't correct the cause for
BOOT.INI having the entry in the first place. The original poster did a
new install after apparently deleting all partitions. There must've
been something left that shouldn't be there.
Click to expand...

Mine has two entries, but it is because I copied the
i386 folder from the CD to my hard drive.

My second entry is entitled "Previous Operating System on C:",
of which there is none. So it is possible to end up
with two entries, on a clean install. I was trying the
hard drive install method, to see if I could shave some
time off the install. The "39 minutes" took 32 minutes.

Paul
 
Start:Run then enter MSCONFIG ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSConfig

When I looked in my boot.ini using that utility, there didn't
seem to be a delete option to remove the extra line in my file.
Click to expand...

When you say delete option, do you mean the option to 'check all boot
paths'. When you click on this button, if Windows finds anything that
doesn't exists, then it asks you if you want to remove the line.
However, if you say yes then the startup option changes from normal to
selective. Not a major issue, but can be avoided if you edit the
boot.ini directly in notepad.
 
I used the above and it worked perfectly, telling me there was an invalid
entry, and would I like to delete it. Did and all was well. I thank you all
for the input, and again, want to compliment this newsgroup. I always get an
answer to any problem I ever encountered. I posted this question at lunch
today, and couldn't wait to get home tonite, and I wasn't disappointed.
Again, thanks to all
 
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