Boot up issue

[Stumben]

I am sure someone knows this.

When I boot up, it forces me to choose between windows xp, and windows xp setup. I have to manually select Windows xp everytime or it attempts to run setup which fails.

A while back I had tried to repair/re-install windows because of a virus but it went but so I know thats what screwed it up. Since then I got some good spy-ware programs and my computer seems clean except this one annoying issue.

I read somewhere about a boot.ini file that windows uses but the only one I can find is a boot.ini.backup.

How do I fix this?

Thanks!

 

[dclive]

Go into Windows Explorer, turn on the option (tools/options) to show all hidden files. Note you can now see c:\boot.ini. Do a properties on Boot.ini, and remove the 'hidden' and 'readonly' checkboxes, and then click OK.

Open boot.ini in Notepad and remove the line that has the setup section in it. Save notepad.

Reboot. You won't have that line anymore.

 

[robisbell]

do not forget to re enable the hidden and read only attributes before you reboot.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: robisbell
do not forget to re enable the hidden and read only attributes before you reboot.

It isn't critical (or even necessary) to do so. Yes, it adds a little bit of protection from unnecessary deleting, but XP has default values for boot.ini built into it, so it's not the big deal it was in NT and 2000 OSs.

 

[robisbell]

I say it is critical, unless you rather something infect or modify or delete the boot.ini.

 

[dclive]

Erm, huh? Users typically run as admin; admin can do anything, behind the scenes, to boot.ini - if a virus is on the machine running in system or the user's context, the file is wide open regardless of read-only or hidden status. The only thing hidden/read-only protects against is a local human being.

 

[robisbell]

and that's what is behind 99.9% of computer problems, human error. I would rather to err on the side of caution, than to futz around and aggrivate the issue.

 

[dclive]

You do know what XP does when this file is deleted, right? By definition it isn't critical, and your explanation (that something would infect this unless hidden/read-only was selected) is nonsensical.