When I start my computer it takes forever to the computer to do anything and then it gives me an error message that says cannot find primary drive 1 and secondary drive 2. Do you wish to continue? I hit continue and then it takes me to a second screen and asks which operating system I wish to use and it has Windows XP twice. I click on the first one and then it finally boots up and I can use the computer. I recently had to reformat the entire computer, one of my children did something to it and it ran extremely slow and had several other issues. It now runs correctly once I get it to the main screen, but I have to jump through hoops to get there.

I would first recommend going to the Malware Section here and make sure your computer is Malware Free. Please describe your problem to them, and then come back here when you are Malware Free.

I don't think it's a malware problem. The computer is not hooked up to the internet, and I have completely re-installed the XP system. I'm not even sure what primary drive 1 and secondary drive 1 do...since I can click on continue and it will boot up and now run fine. It just takes about 15 minutes to boot the computer up now and I have to go through 3 screens before I the computer gets to the main screen. And I don't know why it's asking me which system it wants to run since they are both Windows XP and they both run exactly the same with all the same programs...so I have no idea what that's all about.

Hello,
First ? is do you have 1 physical drive with 2 partitions or 2 separate drives.
If you have 1 drive with 2 partitions, doesn't happen that often, but when you reinstalled Xp, you could have 2 copies of XP on the same drive, correction for this would be to completely Zero out the entire drive and reformat it with 1 partition and then do a Xp clean install.
For 2 separate drives, assuming they are IDE, not SATA, make sure the jumpers are correctly set, Master/Slave or Cable Select, then enter the BIOS and make sure each drive is recognized as such and the Boot Device Priority is set to 1. CDRom, 2. Master Hard Drive, 3. Floppy, then in Hard Drives make sure the correct HD with your newly installed XP is listed first.
Hope this helps

Hey! Did you used to have your computer set-up to be a dual boot? ..Just wondering why Win XP is showing up twice.. Are your sure that you reformatted it, as opposed to accidentally reinstalling it in a different place?

Thanks to both of you for your input. I don't think the computer was ever set up to be a duel boot...unless one of my boys did it on accident. But I think adamsappleone is right...I think I may have put a second copy over the first malfunctioning copy of XP on my computer. I'm not 100% sure on that one, but it's as good an explanations as any for what it's doing. Since before I reformatted it, it did the exact same thing, but when it asked me which XP platform I wanted to run it only gave me one option, now it gives me two...both of which are Windows XP Home Edition. Now, I only have as far as I know, my hard drive on C and my DVD/CD drive on D and that's it. I will today try both of your suggestions, and re-install XP while making sure I take out the previous installs. I did make sure before I installed it the first time that it only had one partition, there is a small secondary something with about 8MB on it, but the computer will not let me delete it, but it will let me delete the other larger partition, but I'm not sure that I should do that or not. I guess I can just keep deleting things until I either get it right or give my computer a fatal nervous breakdown. LOL. But thanks again for both of your replies.