[walterday]

Hi,

My pc has 3 OS's listed on startup. I know was installed on its own partition of a separate drive from the others, but that partition has been formatted; the option is still there though. One is installed on c:\ drive. The last one in the list won't boot due to hardware complications. My boot.ini looks like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


I want to keep the second one, but don't know where to find the files that relate to the others so I can delete them if necessary. Would I be safe in assuming the first one (from the drive that was formatted) can just be deleted from this line, and all files for it are gone? Any help would be appreciated.

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Follow the directions below to edit your boot.ini

• Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
• On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
• Under System Startup, click Edit.

Remove the following 2 lines:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

This is what it should look like when your done:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


Save and close notepad.

[diabillic]

Follow the directions below to edit your boot.ini

• Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
• On the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
• Under System Startup, click Edit.

Remove the following 2 lines:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(2)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

This is what it should look like when your done:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


Save and close notepad.

[walterday]

Thanks for the response, and I know that's how to edit the .ini file, but my question pertains more to the related windows files. If my pc thinks there are 3 Windows installations, should I be checking my hdd's for extra files that I can or should delete in addition to modifying boot.ini? I don't want to just fool the pc into not listing extra OS's; I want to remove them.

[diabillic]

Unless you have a Windows.Old directory, which wasnt introduced until Vista, there is no other record/files that need to be cleaned up. Just edit out the lines in boot.ini and youre done.

[rshaffer61]

Once question. The boot loader is pointing to partition 2 and the OS system is pointing to partition 1.
You may be running into a problem there.

[walterday]

Great, ty. =)

[walterday]

@rshaffer61 Yessir it did cause a minor inconvenience at first; after my next restart I still had 2 OS's listed at the boot menu. One was Windows XP Pro, and the other was something like "Windows [Default]". After coming back and seeing your comment, I changed the boot loader to partition 1 and restarted, and now I don't even see a menu on startup; Windows just goes. Thanks for all the help guys. =)