One and 1/2 Dual Boot

I'll not even try to explain how I got to this shape. I have a Complete XP Microsoft Media Center installed on a hard drive. Also I have a partial XP Pro installed but it didn't finish because the system couldn't find the CDROM when there was a Restart. Come to find out the CDROM quit working for some reason.

Now when I boot I have to move the boot choice from XP Pro to XP Media Center. XP Pro won't boot because it was not completely installed.

Question; How do I remove the XP Pro from the list to boot from?
I will try to explain how this happened if necessary, hope not!

 

Trying to complete the xp pro installation wud be a better idea.

Are they both on the same partition or is xp pro on another drive/partition??
If they were installed on the same partition, then I don't want to get involved in this pb .

if you don't have a xp cd to boot from (in case of pb), or don't feel confident enough, don't follow those instructions :

if Pro and MC are on different partitions :
You can follow these steps to remove xp pro from the boot menu, but skip the "delete directory" step, since u might not delete the right one and it wud be dramatic (dramaaaaa!). Anyway, it shouldn't be on the same drive as the MC instal.
And don't forget to save ur present boot.ini and write down where u save the boot.old!!! And don't delete the wrong line in the boot.ini...
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=888023
If u can reboot fine then :
Finally, (assuming xp pro was on a different partition...) format the xp pro partition (D: I presume) to "erase" all the files.
if u can't reboot on XP MC then replace C:\boot.ini by boot.old (that u rename boot.ini) from the recovery console (boot on xp cd).

edit :

stupid me, u said ur cdrom doesn't work! cdrom or cd drive??? Anyway, if u can't use cd/cd drive, don't go into this.

 

Maybe I can clear this up some. This mess is on a Dell PC. There are two partitions on the disk. This is devised by Dell. The small partition has Dell's diagnostic software and other stuff. The main partition has the XP Media Center. I tried the procedure I was used to by attempting to "Repair" the OS by putting in the CD than came with the system. I have done this many time with the older XP Dell I had.

This one won't boot from the CD. I went into BIOS and selected it but it still won't. So I put the CD in while windows was running and got a menu of things on the Disk. One was to "install XP" which I hoped would bring up the Repair section. It indicated that no file or data would be lost on the action. So away I went. After about 5 minutes a window appeared that indicated a restart was in order. So after a restart was started, the error came that the CDROM was not working. There I was stuck between half of an install and no where to go.

I didn't notice that it was trying to install XP Pro because Dell told me that Media Center was part of XP Pro. That make sense?

It appears to me that I was about to install XP Pro on this partition as well as having XP Media Center alread there.

I did get the CDROM to working by removing it from Device Manager and restarting. Now I don't want to go back and finish because of the trouble I anticipate on having two OS/s on a single partition. I could just start over and put the original factory setup back. I've had the PC only a month and have worked hard to get the little thing I wanted on here.

I just want to remove my mess up of putting "part of XP Pro" on a partition that already has a good workable OS.

There's more to why I blundered into this than I wish to tell!

 

Ok, looked for info and XP media center is xp pro (minus few options) + a media add-on, usually on the second cd.

So it looks like Dell provided kind of an automated set up of the 2 bits program, and u launched only the xp pro install bit, thus recognised as a different OS.

So, u can still try the link I gave previously... but don't ask me what directory to delete
I wouldn't delete any directory and just do the boot.ini change.

just by chance... u had no before-the-mess restore point I guess?

 

Just got in and saw your reply. I'm going to try what you suggested. If worse comes to worse, I can always go back to day one.

I did try the System Restore but continued to get the dual boot thing.

Worse things have happened so I'll take it with a half-grin as I caused the entire thing by being careless. Thank you for the replies.