[Xaters]

I have a Dell Studio 1737 Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz, 4GB DDR2, 2x320GB SATA HDD).

I plan to have one hard drive dedicated to Windows and another one to Linux OSes. On my first hard drive I've installed Windows XP Professional SP3 x64 multiple times and on my second hard drive I've installed openSUSE 11.1 . I had problems with installing openSUSE but now it works O.K. However, because I didn't know much about GRUB I had installed Windows XP three times (first was installed before openSUSE crashed, the second one was installing when my battery ran out of power and so there is now a third copy of Windows XP).

Both Windows XP and openSUSe work fine and when I turn my laptop on I am presented with 3 GRUB options: two for openSUSE and one for Windows. When I choose the Windows option I am presented with a black screen and a choice of three identical Windows options. Now here where I am having problems. I went into my C drive while working in Windows and saw this three folders "Windows", "Windows0" and "Windows1". I decided to free up some space and went on deleting folders I obviously don't need. I deleted "Windows" and "Windows0" and I had no problems doing that other than a warning popping up. Just to make sure I haven't deleted a working version I also tried to delete "Windows1" but I've got a denial.

So long story short, both Windows XP and openSUSE work but I still see this three choices of Windows (only the top one works) when I choose the "Windows" option in the GRUB menu. How can I clean up Windows registry from this non-working choices? When I open the GRUB file in openSUSE I can see only one choice for Windows.

Thanks.

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hi

Having two windows installed on the same partition is pretty much not a good idea.
I suggest you to follow this guide in order to establish a successful XP clean installation to get rid of all other installations.

Link to the guide: http://www.michaelst...nxpinstall.html

Or See method 1 by microsoft: http://www.michaelst...nxpinstall.html

cheers

ali.B

Edited by ali.B, 28 November 2009 - 05:10 AM.

[ali.B]

hi

Having two windows installed on the same partition is pretty much not a good idea.
I suggest you to follow this guide in order to establish a successful XP clean installation to get rid of all other installations.

Link to the guide: http://www.michaelst...nxpinstall.html

Or See method 1 by microsoft: http://www.michaelst...nxpinstall.html

cheers

ali.B

Edited by ali.B, 28 November 2009 - 05:10 AM.

[Xaters]

I wouldn't want to re-install Windows simply because that would mean I'll probably have to re-install openSUSE as well. Both of them work fine I just need to clean up Windows' MBR for appearance purpose only.

Thanks for your advice but that's not what I need.

[rshaffer61]

Please do the following in the exact steps. Failure to do so could make the boot.ini damaged and cause unstable or unusable results with your system.:

Save a Backup Copy of Boot.ini

1. Click Start, click Run, type sysdm.cpl and then click OK.
2. Click on the Advanced tab, and then click Settings
3. In the Startup and Recovery area at the bottom click Settings.
4. Under System Startup click Edit. This opens the Boot.ini file in Notepad ready for editing.
5. In Notepad, click File on the Menu bar, and then click Save As.
6. First in here change the location in the top white drop down box to Desktop. Then in the file name change to Boot.old and save as Text Document(*.txt) and save it to your Desktop and then click Save



Please copy and paste all the lines from your Boot.ini file in your next reply.


Now you can repeat the steps to get back to step Number 4
I will reply with the Fix to do. Once the fix has been applied then Save and Close the file.
Reboot and let me know if this takes care of your problem


Below you will see a sample of a Windows Professional boot.ini file. Yours will look the same except it may say Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition


Sample Boot.ini File


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

[Xaters]

Sorry for the delay, I just started my work week with night shifts.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.1
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.1="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

The last two folders (Windows and Windows0) were deleted and in the menu only the top choice works. So can I manually delete them here as well?

[rshaffer61]

Yep and then save and when you reboot the system should not ask which OS to boot to.

[Xaters]

Thank you very much.

It worked.

Edited by Xaters, 29 November 2009 - 10:20 AM.

[rshaffer61]

Congratulations. for a successful resolution for your issue.

You are very welcome. I'm glad we could help and please let us know how everything works out for you.
If there is anything else we can do to help please feel free to ask. I appreciate that you allowed me to assist you with your issue and for your patience.
Thank you for choosing GeeksToGo for help.