Win98 Boot.ini Editing

[mackiain]

I reformatted my pc recently:

AMD Thunderbird
1.333mHz
256 DDr Ram
30.0gb HD FAT32
NVIDIA Geforce 2 64mb

I installed Windows 98 and couldnt get the driver for my ethernet card, so instead of waiting untill I could get it off another computer I decided to try and upgrade to WinXP so it would auto detect my internet drivers I could download the driver put it on a disk and reformat another time then just install Win98.

I was unaware that you are unable to upgrade from 98 to XP with the Version I have so winxp only partially installed on the same FAT32 C: 30gb HD as win98. So now when I startup my computer I get this annoying dos selection screen which gives me the choice between either of the 2 operating systems to startup.

WINXP / WIN98

When I try starting up XP (only partially installed) I get an error saying "Cannot Find File <windows root>\system32\hal.dll" However if I choose Win98 my computer works fine and I have no problems with the function of it.

So my question here is how can I get rid of this annoying selection screen and make my computer boot up directly into windows 98?

I was thinking of editing the "boot.ini" file but I need some advice on what to do seeing as how I have tryed just "winging it" before and I ended up screwing my computer up mutiple times.

HERE IS WHAT MY boot.ini file looks like


[Boot Loader]
Timeout=5
Default=C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT
[Operating Systems]
C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows XP Setup"
C:\="Microsoft Windows"


I was planning on just removing the line that says,

C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows XP Setup"

and I figured it would probably fix my problem.

So does anybody know if this is a good idea, or if not what I should do instead?

Thanks in advance, and I hope I provided enough info haha....





Iain

 

[mackiain]

Anybody have a solution for me?

 

[bobojuice]

This happened to me once. I had two WinXP choices. Go into msconfig, go into BOOT.INI and click on "check all boot paths". This should prompt you to remove the entry.

 

[mackiain]

I went into the msconfig and I checked all the boxes under the system.ini/[boot] folder, and restarted the computer but it still does the same thing, heres a screenshot:
Desktop with msconfig open -=CLICK HERE=-

Could I just delete the lines right out of the boot.ini file in C:\ like i was saying above in my first topic post?

 

[derrmc]

I reformatted my pc recently:

So my question here is how can I get rid of this annoying selection screen and make my computer boot up directly into windows 98?

I was thinking of editing the "boot.ini" file but I need some advice on what to do seeing as how I have tryed just "winging it" before and I ended up screwing my computer up mutiple times.

HERE IS WHAT MY boot.ini file looks like


[Boot Loader]
Timeout=5
Default=C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT
[Operating Systems]
C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows XP Setup"
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

***********Change it to this*************

[Boot Loader]
Timeout=5
Default=C:\
[Operating Systems]
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

Save your original to a floppy so you can use dos to put it back to c: if need be.
backup first

 

[mackiain]

Re: Re: Win98 Boot.ini Editing

***********Change it to this*************

[Boot Loader]
Timeout=5
Default=C:\
[Operating Systems]
C:\="Microsoft Windows"

Save your original to a floppy so you can use dos to put it back to c: if need be.
backup first [/B]

THANKS MAN THAT WORKED LIKE A CHARM, GOOD ADVICE!