Too many O/S

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andy
  • Start date Start date
A

Andy

Just installed XP home on new system. Sata drive partitioned into 3 drives.
Had problems during initial setup resulting in me having a copy of xp home
on each of the partitions. Once got windows sorted on the C drive, and from
within windows explorer i formated both D and E drive, this seemed okay. Has
this caused a problem?, if not fine, but the problem i'm left with, is that
when you boot up the system, you are presented with the choice of 3
different xp home boot up selections. How can i remove this multi-boot up
option?

Any help would be most appreciated.
Thanks
Andy
 
There is an easy way and a hard(er) way to do this. I have always had to do it the hard way myself. (I had a Windows XP Home and Windows ME setup. Now I have a dual-boot with two copies of XP. This will work regardless.)

If you can load an os, right-click on My Computer and choose Properties. Click on the Advanced tab. At the bottom there should be a section for Startup and Recovery and a Settings button. Push it. A window will come up with System Startup at the top. Then it says ‘Default operating system’ with what should be a list of all your os choices in a dropdown menu. Then it has some other options there. Anyway hit the Edit button, and your ‘boot.ini’ file will appear in Notepad. It should look similar to this:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Small" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Big" /fastdetect

Timeout is timer in seconds for how long you want the computer to show you a list of operating systems to choose from before it loads the default. Default is just what it sounds like and then you see all your choices, which should be one for you right now. The 'multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=â€Microsoft… Blah Blah Blah' lines are important. The rdisk(#) is talking about physical hard drives. (0) is C: and (1) is D: etc. On my setup, for instance, I am booting from my D: drive. Everything in the double quotes is what you will see when you turn on your computer. Delete two whole lines (that start with 'multi') and make sure to change the rdisk(#) to 0 (see note). Change the name of the os to what you will. Save your changes and restart. That’s it.

Note:
If your Windows install is on your C: partition, use 0, if it is on D: partition, use 1, and if it is on your E: partition, use 2. Also note that i have two physical drives with one partition apiece in this example. You may need to change the # for the partition instead of the rdisk. In any case you are probably booting from the C: partition, in which case the line should look like this:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft... blah, blah, blah"
I do not know what '/fastdetect' does, but I would leave it there.
 
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