After installing Win XP Pro I get two OS boot options

[JonathanMortimer]

It didn't happen before a few days ago, I installed as normal but when I go to boot up the machine it gives me two OS options, like there are two copies of Windows XP installed, but only the default (top) one works; the other gives a hard drive access error.

I know why the bottom one doesn't work - looking in the boot.ini file there are two entries, one for partition(1) and the other for partition(2), yet I did what I always do when installing and removed all existing partitions with a full NTFS format (to test drive integrity as much as anything else, these machines are a few years old but still good work horses). There is no second partition on the disk, I confirmed this using Acronis, only a very small area of unallocated space at the end of the drive (which is always there).

So why does this second entry appear in boot.ini, and is there anything I can do to prevent it?

Thanks!

 

[goombawaho]

Just rem it out in the boot.ini You'll have to make it non-Read Only first. Put a semicolon in front of the non-existent boot entry. You are done.

[operating systems]
; multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

 

[BadBigBen]

Or REMOVE that line altogether...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[JonathanMortimer]

Thanks guys, I already removed the line from boot.ini and it works fine, but it's annoying to have to do this step in the first place.

 

[linney]

What does something like Fdisk from an old 9x Startup Floppy (or CD) tell you about any Partitions on the drive, when you use Option 4 (I think??) from Fdisk?

As you say, they are slightly older machines, perhaps it was just an unknown glitch, you get that type of thing on new machines too. We shrug our shoulders and carry on as best we can, perhaps cursing Microsoft under our breath.

 

[vanka25]

I have the same thing happen to me when I re-install XP on my Dells at work. I boot from the CD, delete all partitions (Dell has a FAT recovery partition and the OS partition), then do a clean install - after which I'm greeted with the two choices when I boot. I just shrug my shoulders and remove the second entry from boot.ini.

 

[wolluf]

If you install XP on a drive that has it installed already and your new install is to a different partition than the original, then even if you remove ALL partitions during the install (using XP's tools), it cleverly stores the original boot.ini entry and then puts it back into the new boot.ini. So I would assume in this case there was a probably defunct XP installation on partition 2 before the new install was started (perhaps machine was from supplier who have a first recovery or tools partition).