Strange problem with Windows XP boot

[Cpntrips]

I got a new hard drive and didnt want to lose the data on my old C: drive. I installed Windows XP on the new hard drive and made my old hard drive the D: drive and deleted the Windows Directory on it. Every once in awhile, usually after installing something new I will get the OS selection screen upon bootup asking me which installation of Windows XP do I want to choose. Somehow it still thinks i have a 2nd installation of Windows XP on my old drive. If I choose that installation it errors with a message that I am missing the hal.dll which of course is not there since I deleted the entire windows directory. The problem is that no matter which installation choiuce I choose i get the same error message. After rebooting a couple times it will all of a suddenly boot properly without the OS choice screen.

What is going on here? What does windows XP check to determine that there is another installation and how can I get rid of this, short of formatting my D: drive which I dont want to do?

 

[TheCorm]

As far as I am aware it's the same as Win2k....yuo need to find the file called boot.ini and delete out the 2nd O/S listed there, alternatively, you can go to (this is based on w2k not xp so it might be slightly different):

1. Right click on my computer
2. Click properties
3. Goto Advanced tab
4. Click on startup and recovery tab
5. You can turn the display a list of operating systems option off

Corm

 

[FluxCapacitor]

Sounds like moving your drives around has confused windows as to where your operating system is.

I'm not sure deleting the 2nd entry of boot.ini will have any effect since they are both pointing to the wrong location. You should do like The Corm said and delete one of the 2 entries, but make sure the one that remains points to the correct partition. Your boot.ini file should look something like this..... (If your \winnt directory is the first partition of C:, which it sounds like it is):

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Of course, yours most likely won't say "Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" but instead something to do with XP. Now, delete the 2nd entry under the [operating systems] section and fix the default and remaining entry so it follows this format:

mulit(0) 0=primary ide controller 1=secondary ide controller, etc
disk(0) leave as 0
rdisk(0) 0=master 1=slave
partition(1) 1=1st partition 2=2nd partition 3=3rd partition etc (for the drive with your \winnt directory on it)

So, for XP installed to C: with only 1 partition on the disk, you would set it up like the example I gave above.

Make sense? If not, I can try to help you out further.

 

[Cpntrips]

I checked the boot.ini and currently there is only one entry showing. The computer is also booting properly without any OS selection screen.

The problem only seems to occur after installing some drivers. This happened after I installed my sound card drivers and also after installing my network card drivers. Both times after rebooting I get the OS selection screen and neither one will boot properly, stating the Hal.dll is missing. This ONLY ocurred after installing the drivers and rebooting. All I did to get rid of the problem was to boot from the CD and go into the repair mode command prompt and simply rebooted from there. I didnt actively make any changes it just starts to work again after rebooting from within the repair mode. I dont know why this fixes it but it does.

Still if there is a file, registry entry, or some other pointer to the old drive Id like to get rid of it. I already deleted the entire d:\windows direfctory where the old operating system was located.

 

[woodcomp]

The correct way to get rid of this annoyance is to first make certain your secondary drive is set as slave on your hard drives pins. Do not use cable select on either of the drives, physically set them as master and slave. Next if you really want to get anal about it, you need to fdsik the master boot record of the second drive. This is easily done by making a bootable floppy and make sure the fdisk program is on there. Then with the questionable drive set as master boot it to the floppy. Type in the A:\ prompt "fdisk /mbr" this will rewrite the master boot record of the hard drive on IDE 0. Then reconnect the other drive and this one as outlined before. You should then have no more trouble if you do you may need to format that drive.