Last night, something got randomly messed up in my Bios and it wasn’t seeing my hard drive. When I tried booting off the XP CD, it would find it, but wouldn’t see it again if I rebooted.
In one of those “really tired and it seems like a plan” moments, I tried installing windows on my other drive partition, to see if I could at least get it up and running again and then fix the main partition and get rid of the install on the other. Naturally, it got to the first reboot, then couldn’t find the drive again, so it was a non starter.
After sleeping on it, I naturally woke up, realized exactly what the problem was and fixed it. However, now when it boots up, it asks me which windows install to use. Since one is only a vestigial version, I’d like to get rid of it. Any ideas where I can go to get this removed from the startup sequence? I know just enough to be dangerous about computers, but can look somewhere and probably figure it out if someone tells me where to go.
Hrm…removing the ‘phantom’ version…I dont think so…but thre is a way to make sure the right install is the primary one…
Specifying the Default Operating System for Startup
If you have more than one operating system on your computer, you can set the operating system that you want to use as the default one for when you start your computer:
• Click Start, click Control Panel, and then double-click System.
• On the Advanced tab, under Startup and Recovery, click Settings.
• Under System startup, in the Default operating system list, click the operating system that you want to start when you turn on or restart your computer.
• Select the Display list of operating systems for check box, and then type the number of seconds for which you want the list displayed before the default operating system starts automatically.
To manually edit the boot options file, click Edit. Microsoft strongly recommends that you do not modify the boot options file (Boot.ini), because doing so may render your computer unusable.
