Computer asks for uninstalled operating system

R

RPT

New Member
Hello all ... a long time ago I installed a second version of Windows XP on my computer. If memory serves, I installed it on the same directory as my original operating system. I uninstalled it shortly thereafter ... however, every time I boot up, the computer asks me which copy of XP I want to use. This despite the fact that I have since totally reinstalled windows and even replaced the physical hard drive! How can I get it to stop asking for an operating system that no longer exists?
Currently I am running XP Pro on an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with 2 Gigs of RAM and 750 Gigs on 3 hard drives.
Many Thanks!!
 
Your boot.ini file is on a separate drive from your current copy of Windows. While you may have selected the second or third drive the Windows installer always looks for the first drive on the system. With one ide and two sata drives currently in use here I have to unplug the ide drive in order to install Windows on the first sata since the boot information and files will be copied to the ide otherwise.

Simpe tip on cleaning that up? First shutdown and unplug the other drives and boot from the XP installation disk to the recovery console. That would be pressing R for repair instead of installing Windows. Once at the command prompt type in "Fixboot" and "Fixmbr" to see new boot information written right there.

Now shutdown and replug the other two drives back in and make sure the Windows drive is set as the default boot drive in the bios. Waa laa... Windows simply boots to the desktop with no secondary option seen at startup. Then look at the root of the other two drives for the ntldr and boot.ini files for manual deletion.
 
If that was on a different drive you would simply boot upto the recovery console with the Windows drive being the only one plugged in and use the commands mentioned earlier. If on the same drive you can use NotePad and save to overwrite with the "all files" option or even go into the boot.ini section of the msconfig there to remove the invalid entry. It's a quick repair whichever method is used.
 
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