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2x win2000 trouble

Started by sentofuno, November 10, 2003, 19:09 hrs

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sentofuno

for some reason at bootup i have the option of 2 OS's, both win2000 pro.

it seems to be from trying to install it onto a HDD that wasn't the primary master at the time (through sheer laziness)

the first of the identical options will not boot, the bottom one will (as if nothing had happened, other than having to select OS's at bootup)

is there a way to get rid of this 'first' and useless OS?

query

Yes, remove it from the boot.ini file.  You will need to do the following:

Make an emergency boot disc for Windows 2000 (the option is part of Windows Backup).

Set Explorer to show all files, including system files.  Remove the read-only attribute from c:\boot.ini.  

Edit the boot.ini file with notepad or another text editor. Save it and reset the read-only attribute.

Reboot the system and the option for the other OS will be gone.

Make sure you remove the correct entry from the file - if you remove the wrong one, you may not be able to get back into your system (which is why you need the emergency floppy handy).


sentofuno

ahh, a ray of hope..


edit boot.ini how? :D

sorry, i am unskilled in the ways of OS surgery.

query

It's just a text file - there'll be an entry like

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

(or rather two of them).

Remove the one you don't want.

Like I wrote earlier - BACK IT UP AND HAVE AN EMERGENCY DISKETTE HANDY


sentofuno

thanks so much query, it worked like a charm!

altho.. i couldn't actually find boot.ini so i used msconfig instead. on the boot.ini tab it has a 'check all boot paths' button, which detected the unwanted entry. seemed like a quicker and safer way than editing text to me :D

query

Indeed it is, as long as you've added msconfig to 2000 (it isn't there by default).

XP allows you to edit the boot.ini file from the system applet.

sentofuno

yeah i started another thread in here asking about msconfig and i downloaded it for win2000.

thanks again :)