Solved Mistake in reinstalling/overwriting new XP on previous XP

[khoshtipi]

Hello all,

My friend's machine running Windows XP is like below when I turned it on:

Microsoft Windows XP professional
Microsoft Windows XP professional
Microsoft Windows XP professional

Yes, three choices that I can start the OS by one of those and can choose by up/down keys.
But only the first/upper OS works properly. The second & third don't work, that is, we can chose each one of those two for starting the OS but after showing the WELCOME page, it restarts itself and again and again.
I have two questions.

1- Why does this problem happen? (e.g. by not formatting the C: drive before installing the fresh XP OS?)
2- How to solve it, that is, remove second and third ones and only keep the first one which is correctly running?

 

[Brink]

Hello Khoshtipi,

You could boot into the XP that works, then use the tutorial below to remove the other two non-working boot entries. Just be sure to remove the correct ones.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2288-windows-boot-manager-delete-listed-operating-system.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[khoshtipi]

Thank you Dear shawn. But does that solution work for XP as well?

 

[Ztruker]

Right click on My Computer, select Properties.
Click on Advanced.
Click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
Click the Edit button.
Look at the Default= line as that points to the default OS to boot.
Remove the two that are different than the Default= under [Operating Systems].
Save the changes.

Now when you boot XP it will go directly to the single OS in boot.ini.

Note: You should have asked this in a XP forum rather than Windows 7.

 

[khoshtipi]

Yeah that's right, sorry. But could I find such good guys in xpforums!?
Thank you.

 

[Brink]

Glad you got it sorted Khoshtipi.

 

[khoshtipi]

Right click on My Computer, select Properties.
Click on Advanced.
Click Settings under Startup and Recovery.
Click the Edit button.
Look at the Default= line as that points to the default OS to boot.
Remove the two that are different than the Default= under [Operating Systems].
Save the changes.

Now when you boot XP it will go directly to the single OS in boot.ini.

Note: You should have asked this in a XP forum rather than Windows 7.

I did that solution but it made the case worse. I had to reinstall a new copy

 

[Ztruker]

What do you "it made the case worse"? It shouldn't have had any effect except to get rid of the bogus entries so your computer boots directly without the Boot Manager window.

Just curious since it no longer matter5s.

 

[khoshtipi]

When I removed two lines (in edit text file) and saved and restarted the OS, it booted showing two different lines as following:
Default Windows
Default Windows

And when I booted from each of that two, no one was the previous right OS, so I had to ignore that solution and OS as well and reinstall a new one.

I'm not sure the solution had such risks or my work wasn't completely correct but I was very careful when editing that text edit file.

 

[Ztruker]

Okay, thanks. No idea why it didn't work but at least you are all set now.