Reformat Issue

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fjf314

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Last night I reformatted my PC with Windows XP Media Center Edition. I deleted all of the existing partitions on my system and formatted the entire HDD for XP. The installation went through fine. The only issue is that when I boot up my PC now, a Boot Menu comes up giving me two different versions of Windows XP Media Center Edition to choose from. The first choice is the installation that I just did and works fine. I don't know where the second choice came from and it does not work.

At first, I just assumed that despite deleting all of my previous patitions and formatting the entire drive, somehow my previous install of XP was left over. So I booted to GParted Live thinking that I would just use that to delete whatever little partition was left over. However, the only partition that shows up is the one that my fresh install of XP is on.

A friend of mine who I talked to earlier today said that he experienced a similar glitch when reformatting with XP before. While the second, non-working version of XP isn't really hurting anything, it's just wasting space and it's annoying to have to press enter right after the BIOS screen every time that I reboot.

I did some Google searches for advice and came up with the following site:

http://www.cyberwalker.com/faqs/reinstall-reformat-winxp/two-copies-xp.html

As I said, though, I don't have a second partition, only one. So that solution is not working. If anyone has some advice, I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance!
 
modify your boot.ini file through system properties, advanced tab > startup & recovery settings
mine looks like this

Code:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
 
That would set my machine to boot from the working version of Windows XP, but the second, non-working version would still actually exist, correct?
 
go to start run, type msconfig. go to boot.ini there. check "check the boot paths" option. it will ask you if you want to remove it. say yes
 
EricB said:
go to start run, type msconfig. go to boot.ini there. check "check the boot paths" option. it will ask you if you want to remove it. say yes

Alright, that was easy enough. Thanks for the help guys!
 
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