setup

  • Thread starter Thread starter Joanne
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J

Joanne

I formatted my hard drive and re-installed WinXP Pro
Using a Dell 4300 series
Now when I boot up I get a stop asking me which of 2 WinXP Pro installs
do I want to boot from
No. 1 boots succesfully
No. 2 gives me errors about not finding the boot drive.

How can I get this off the computer so it will boot without me hanging
around to choose the install I want to use.

I must have made some kind of error when I put the op back on, but I
don't want to make it worse by doing all my setups and software
installations and then find out I have to start all over with another
format, so any help you can provide me to avoid that sure will be
appreciated.

Thanks
Joanne
 
Joanne said:
I formatted my hard drive and re-installed WinXP Pro
Click to expand...


Exactly how did you do these two things? The correct way is to boot from
the Windows XP CD (change the BIOS boot order if necessary to accomplish
this) and follow the prompts for a clean installation (delete the existing
partition by pressing "D" when prompted, then create a new one).

If you ended up with two installations to choose from, presumably you didn't
do this correctly .

Using a Dell 4300 series
Now when I boot up I get a stop asking me which of 2 WinXP Pro
installs do I want to boot from
No. 1 boots succesfully
No. 2 gives me errors about not finding the boot drive.

How can I get this off the computer so it will boot without me hanging
around to choose the install I want to use.

I must have made some kind of error when I put the op back on, but I
don't want to make it worse by doing all my setups and software
installations and then find out I have to start all over with another
format, so any help you can provide me to avoid that sure will be
appreciated.
Click to expand...


See if number 20 here helps you:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/xpfaq.html
 
Thanks for your interest Ken

This is what I did
Using boot to WinXP CD, I deleted the partition, repartitioned and
formatted the hard drive. Then I installed winxp.

Couple days later I tried booting up and it wouldn't go so I put the
winxp cd back in, went to the setup choices, chose "R" for repair,
changed my mind and exited. I think that this is when the 'second'
install issue began. As it turns out, the computer boots just fine when
I don't have a non-system cd in the drive (Duh!!) So now I have this
mess and am tring to find a quicker way than starting at step one and
re-doint the whole thing
Thanks for your time
Joanne
 
Joanne said:
Thanks for your interest Ken

This is what I did
Using boot to WinXP CD, I deleted the partition, repartitioned and
formatted the hard drive. Then I installed winxp.
Click to expand...


Good. That's the correct way to do it.


Couple days later I tried booting up and it wouldn't go so I put the
winxp cd back in, went to the setup choices, chose "R" for repair,
changed my mind and exited. I think that this is when the 'second'
install issue began. As it turns out, the computer boots just fine
when I don't have a non-system cd in the drive (Duh!!)
Click to expand...


I always prefer to keep the boot order hard drive first, changing it to
CD-first only when I need it. That stops accidents like this.

So now I have
this mess and am tring to find a quicker way than starting at step
one and re-doint the whole thing
Click to expand...


Then it sound like your only problem may be an extra bad entry in boot.ini.
Go to Start | Run, and type msconfig. On the boot-ini tab, choose "Check all
boot paths."

Thanks for your time
Click to expand...


You're welcome. Glad to help.
 
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