Multi-OS startup screen
 

I am reinstalling a friend's PC with files corrupted due to a power failure. Previously, he had 2 installations of WinXP and a Win98 OS on different partitions. Now I did a clean install of WinXP on a reformatted C: drive and deleted the other partitions. However, on start-up, the screen prompting me to choose among the previous 3 OS still appears, and I am quite sure that I now have only 1 OS installed. How to get rid of the other defunct choices?
Thanks and regards.

Right click on my computer, choose properties

Advanced Tab

Settings button on Startup and Recovery

Choose edit and up will pop boot.ini in notepad.

Follow your nose - but dont get it wrong !

T.

Thanks for the tip, Trumble, but what I don't understand is that I have done a reformat, with everything wiped clean on the HDD, so where is the record of previous OS installations stored? It is unlikely to be stored in BIOS, which is the only other memory area left untouched with the formating?

I dont know if you can do this with windows xp any more

fdisk /mbr

Removes the master boot record and any boot loader (OS menu selection system) that resides there in but retains the data.

It's been such a long time since I've dont anything like that, there might be some tools on the net to sort it out as I dont think XP support all this now.

Jules

Ahh here you go, XP uses fixboot and fixmbr now, from the recovery console:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314058

Jules

just go into c:\boot.ini in notepad and remove the offending lines. you'll need to unhide protected os and hidden files, and also disable read-only on the file.

Thanks for the info, people. At least I now know that not all info are wiped out by a disk format. Haven't got time to go over to my friend's place to delete the other startup selections yet, but this also helped explain why I can't log on initially. Kept asking me for my admin password when none was set on the PC previously. Took the easy way out by formatting and clean reboot.