Hi, Blitz.
As Philo says, the boot.ini file you posted has only ONE installation shown
under [operating systems]. You must be showing us the wrong Boot.ini file.
You can have dozens of Boot.ini files scattered all around your computer,
but the only one that matters is the one in the Root of the System
Partition - almost always C:\boot.ini.
C:\boot.ini should be Hidden, System and Read-only. This means that it
won't show up in Windows Explorer unless you've gone to Folder Options and
changed the default settings. An easy way to be sure that you are looking
at the correct Boot.ini is to go to System Properties | Advanced | Startup
and Recovery Settings and click the Edit button. This opens C:\boot.ini in
Notepad so that you can edit it and save your changes without dealing with
the HSR attributes.
In C:\Boot.ini, ALL your possible choices are listed under [operating
systems]. Your default choice is listed under [boot loader]. Each
installation's location is shown by HDD and partition NUMBER, rather than by
drive letter. Physical hard disks are shown as rdisk(#), with numbers
starting at zero; partitions are numbered starting with one on each HDD. So
the boot.ini file you posted shows only one WinXP, in the \WINNT folder on
rdisk(0)partition(1) - the first partition on your first physical drive. So
the default (and only possible) WinXP booted from THIS version of Boot.ini
would be the one in C:\WINNT.
By the way, the default name for the WinXP "boot folder" is \Windows UNLESS
you upgraded to WinXP from Win2K or WinNT4, in which case it would have
inherited the \WINNT name from the previous Windows version. That is, a
clean install goes into X:\Windows; an upgrade into X:\WINNT, where X: is
whichever disk volume you specified during WinXP Setup. This may help you
determine which installation you want to keep - when you find the second
version in C:\Boot.ini.
Once you've found the "wrong" version, delete its boot folder entirely; this
should get rid of the hundreds of megabytes of files and subdirectory
structure. If WinXP won't let you delete \WINNT, that means you are trying
to delete the one that is currently running - and WinXP will refuse to
commit suicide. So, find and delete the other \Windows or \WINNT.
No need to reformat, either before or after this, but you probably will want
to empty the Recycle Bin and then defragment, just to keep your hard drive
neat and tidy.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
blitz said:
Thx for the response Jerry.
I did boot into the one want, but before i start deleting how do i now
excactly what all references are to the old one.
This is what my ini file looks like:
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /fastdetect
The 2nd one is the one i want. After booting into the one i want, i look
at
my c drive and see a winnt folder, windows folder, doc & settings folder
with
users from both systems, I386 folder, OEMDRVRS folder, program files
folder.
How do i know what reference to old system?
Thx again
Jerry said:
The usual procedure is to boot into the one you want, delete all folders
of
the 'other' one, edit boot.ini to remove the reference to the one
deleted,
reboot and you're done.
