How do I get Windows to stop asking me which install to boot??

[Demosthenes]

Dangit. I know I deleted what windows files I knew were on the hard drives, and I formatted the drive I was about to install windows to.. but for some reason it detects more than one windows install, and asks me to pick which one every time I boot up! Anyone know how to fix it to just boot off the one working Windows?

 

[ChampionAtTufshop]

fdisk /mbr i think

rewrites the master boot record

 

[DanTMWTMP]

your boot.ini file...

hmm..to go there, go to start, run, then type "cmd"

then make sure you do a "cd\" so you're in the c:\ directory..

now type "edit boot.ini"

you should see

[boot loader]
blahbalhbalbh
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" <---or whatever you're running
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 98" <--- whatever u had b4...just delete this line


after u delete that line....save it...and everything should be fine..

MAKE SURE YOU DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE.....and REMEMBER THAT IN THE CMD PROMPT, THE MOUSE IS NOT RECOGNIZED....so u gotta do the manual keyboard way to save and move around that curser in it....(like if u wanna save/edit..alt, and use ur arrow keys...blah)

hope that helped

 

[JimKiler]

hope he doesn't delete the wrong line in his boot.ini!

 

[dbwillis]

Right click "My Computer", click 'Properties', click on "Advanced" tab, then click the button labled "Startup and Recovery" , uncheck the "display list of operating systems..." option

 

[Sharam]

You say one working windows, we don't know the history here or at least I don't 🙂

Sounds like you Installed Windows NT/ 2K or XP on top of Win 9X installation and later decided to format a partition/ drive other than your C: for a fresh install! (again we don't know details here, just assuming but primary/ active partition any way)

The Boot.ini is not detecting anything just trying to do its job as a boot manager in which case the corrupted or none existing, will just produce errors.

What version of Windows do you now have?

The man with the master plan and dbwillis's suggestion will both work if you have any flavour of NT installed, if you have 9X installed you can just simply delete the boot.ini alongside NTLoader and NTDetect.com safely.
(DanTMWTMP, why can't he just edit the file in Winblows other than the possibility of past multiple NT installs using NTFS with Win9X the only working OS now and the NTFS not being accessible)

How many partitions you have/ had and how you installed your OSs b4 and on which partitions/ drives in what order, would've made helping you easier 🙂 I would get my data and start fresh, sounds a bit messy in there!

Good Luck and happy computing!