I've been asked to look at a laptop for a mate, whos children had kindly messed it up. Looks like the laptop originally came with Win2k and the children very kindly decided that they'd install XP not once but twice. One copy is in a windows directory, the other in a WINNT folder (obviously they upgraded this from win2k)

I have tried to re-install XP (new installation) and it appears to go ok, until I reboot the machine and then you get the dual boot menu, with two version of XP to choose from. Does anyone have any good ideas, how I could remove one copy of XP and install as normal ? Will I need a copy of win2k or what ?

All they want is a stadard copy of XP on the machine. They have the recovery disks, but won't be home until after 5pm and I wanted to get it resolved today.

Thanks in advance, Phill

Floor it and perform a fresh install.

Kids.... pfff

;)

Can you not go thru the XP setup program and select to delete the partition and recreate it, hence wiping anything there in the past ?

Dave

If you use the setup program to delete the partition, you should reboot from the cd and run setup again.

That's what pisses me off about XP. Why can't I just format the hard drive (running fdisk and partitioning the drive would be great) then boot with a 98 disk and install XP fresh, or can I do something like that ?

Only thing that worries me about pissing around with the boot.ini is both XP versions are on the menu, and I'm not sure which one to delete ?

I got a recovery disk here as well, but no documentation and no clear way of starting the recovery off. By the way it's a Panasonic Toughbook CF-28. Nice bit of kit ;)

Thanks Phill

That sounds like my IBM Recovery Disk that came out of the box with the laptop! :rolleyes:

Bloody thing. Well at least it's working now, although I haven't got the touch screen working yet :rolleyes:

Thanks for all the help, Phill

PS Yes the recovery disk came out the box, but were the wrong one :(

It's a 'feature' of booting from the XP cd, it sees the old install and creates two entries in boot.ini even if you delete the old partition and create a new one and install fresh. If it's a standard XP Pro install in \windows then boot.ini should probably look like:

Home will look much the same, essentially remove any lines in the [operating systems] section you don't want, once there's only one you won't get the boot menu.

[Edited by Andrewza - 5/12/2003 11:43:23 AM]

Think I've sussed it now. I needed to boot from XP disk and not start in within XP. Deleted and created a partition, and am installing XP again now.

Oh by the way sussed the recovery disk out (lol was bootable) but said it was the wrong recovery disk for the laptop :eek:

13 % through a format now :rolleyes:

Thanks Phill

[Edited by babber - 5/12/2003 12:47:22 PM]