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Accidentally Installed 2 XP pro OS's

W

Willith

Senior member
I was installing a new hard drive on my system and I already had XP installed. I went in and FDisked the new drive and XP loaded and i went in and the new drive wasn't on the system to format (I use NTFS). So, I figured I would use my XP CD and see about formatting the drive that way, well I selected that drive to install XP on and I figured that once it was formatted I would just abort the XP install. Needless to say, I assumed wrong and now when my system boots I have 2 versions of XP to choose from (1 works and 1 doesn't) my old OS is still there, but the aborted install shows up as well. Is there any way I can get rid of the other boot choice or will I have to do another FDisk and a clean install?
 
In Xp if you go into administrative tools and then computer management there is a section for adding or removing partitions. Just can't mess with the os partition. If your drive is installed and the jumper (s) are set right on it you should see your drive in here at least. If you have mreo questions about how to use the utility in computer management let me know, its really verry simple. Here is the whole path: /control panel/administrative tools/computer management/storage/disk management. I do not think you need to fdisk /mbr by the way. If you did install another XP but on a different hd then the master boot record would still be intact on the original drive. As I said before you new HD should deffinately be listed in disk management even if its not in my computer regardless of how it was formated (assuming its intalled correctly).

PS: I think I also assume that you are getting the dual boot screen which shows two different XP options. Boot to the original one and do the disk management stuff from the original install of XP not the second. Like I said before the disk managment will not let you mess with the OS partition and if you boot to the accidental install you wil not be able to modify it since it will be active.
 


<< In Xp if you go into administrative tools and then computer management there is a section for adding or removing partitions. Just can't mess with the os partition. If your drive is installed and the jumper (s) are set right on it you should see your drive in here at least. If you have mreo questions about how to use the utility in computer management let me know, its really verry simple. Here is the whole path: /control panel/administrative tools/computer management/storage/disk management. I do not think you need to fdisk /mbr by the way. If you did install another XP but on a different hd then the master boot record would still be intact on the original drive. As I said before you new HD should deffinately be listed in disk management even if its not in my computer regardless of how it was formated (assuming its intalled correctly).

PS: I think I also assume that you are getting the dual boot screen which shows two different XP options. Boot to the original one and do the disk management stuff from the original install of XP not the second. Like I said before the disk managment will not let you mess with the OS partition and if you boot to the accidental install you wil not be able to modify it since it will be active. >>



Ok I found the place your talking about, but I'm not really sure what to do once I get here. I already cleaned up the other OS installed, but i keep getting that stupid selection screen when I boot and I want to get rid of that if possible now. BTW what is Dynamic Disk? I see that being an option on the disks where you told me to go to. Thanks for the help.
 
Right click on my computer then go to properties (system properties from control panel)
Click on the Advanced tab
Where it says "Startup and Recovery" click on settings
There is a section where it says "default operating system" click on the one that works

click on edit boot file and under the words "[operating systems]" delete the non working one.

that should be it.
 
Ok I did that and I get the choice of 2 different "Windows (default)" options now. Can I just delete everything under the boot.ini thing or do I really need that? Can someone who is using XP Pro please copy your boot.ini file and paste it here so I can see if I can paste it on mine to get it to work? Thanks for all the help, I'm still learning this stuff. 🙂
 
Do a search for the boot.ini file and then open this in word pad. Remove the extra OS boot line and that is it. As for the dynamic disk option I am not sure about this one. Is it an option in disk management or an option in storage? Any was in disk management you will see your hard drives represented by a "bar graph" shich shows the ful size of the drive and any partitions on it. If there are no partitions and the drive is not formated it will be labeld "unknown" I believe in which case you right click the drive and creat a primary partition and I think after the partition is created it will ask you if you wich to format the partition. If it doesn't automatically ask you to format simply right click the partition and format using NTFS (at least that is the file system I would choose) or you can do FAT32. You can make the primary the full size of the disk or whatever size you want. The other option would be to create a logical drive and then create extended partitions within this logical drive. The logicl drive would be the entire size of the disk and then within the logical drive rightclick and set up you partitions again using the whole size of the drive or createing multiple extended partitions within the logical drive. Any more questions feel free to ask 😀

PS: With your dual boot menu, take care when edditing your boot.ini file. Make sure that you remove the right line. Or if you just don't know which is which remove both, Boot to a start up disk and fdisk /mbr the drive/partition that windows is on and that will for sure take care of it for ya.
 
Thanks for the help, but I'm still getting the option thing to choose between "Windows (Default)" when I boot up, even after i removed all the other OS's and otehr stuff in the boot.ini file. I guess I must be doing something wrong. I understnad what you wer talking about with disk manager now, it's a lot easier to use than Fdisk, so I'll do that from now on when I get newer drives. Now if I could just get rid of that pesky options thing, I'd be happy. 🙂
 
If you removed the line then you at leas should now not have two Default options although you may be getting the screen still. There is a way to get rid of this screen too. I can't remember off the top of my head and I am at work and do not have the accress rights to really get in and find out for ya real quick. Now if you really did install windows on the other drive then the MBR on that drive may somehow be causing you to still get this screen (i think). Format the drive completely and start from scratch in setting up the parttitions on it using the logical drive method.

To get rid of the screen I think that KIAman has the answer to this. The part about going into start up and recovery. There should be an option to remove this boot screen.
 
Well, I really messed it up now and I get an "invalid boot.ini file" error now, but it loads fine and I don't get that stupid selection screen anymore. I think I'll just keep playing with it and see what else I can figure out. I actually found some useful information on the Microsoft knowledge base. 🙂
 
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect



that is my whole boot.ini file. hope this helps
 
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