2 copies of XP on the same disc.

A friend has succeeded it appears in making his computer think that he has two copies of XP on his boot drive. Superficially the HD appears normal in Explorer, at least there is only one Windows directory, but when booting up he is asked which version he wants to load. Fortunatly the first works, but if you select the second it reports a file missing. Is there any way of getting rid of this other than formatting the drive and starting again?

 

You need to edit the boot.ini file.

To do this Right-Click My Computer, and select Properties. Then go to the Advanced tab. Click on Settings under Startup and Recovery. Then click the Edit button under System startup. The delete the line that points to the other OS directory (this will most likely be the last line).

Eric

 

If you aren't comfortable editing the boot.ini you can get rid of the dual boot screen using msconfig. Start>run>msconfig. Click the boot.ini tab and change the timeout value to zero. The next time you boot the computer windows will give you a message about running in diagnostic mode (or some such thing). Just put a checkmark in the box where it says something to the effect of don't show me this again and click ok. That should take care of things for you.

 

Many thanks

Thanks for the information. That looks quite simple. I was expecting to have to tell him to edit the registry!