I need a quick help for my computer

[ps2huang]

It's like this: everytime I open my computer, there will be a black background color with white texts. There is a time limit that I need to select either of WinXP systems--I have 2 WindowXP systems installed in my computer, and I wish to delete one, tell me the procedures of doint it, please. I want to free up my computer memory space.

[atinymonkey]

God. I wish I knew. I have three, and 98se. It can't be good

[radiohead]

What do they both say? Chances are, one is either safe mode or the recovery mode.

[Dave]

As far as I know there's no easy way to remove them. The only sure way I do know is a complete reformat, and I'm not sure you want to do that.

[YT2095]

is your HDD partitioned to accomodate both seperately (I sincerely hope they`re not both in the same partition!).

 

if you have a look in the startup batchfile, it`ll show you all that text that you see when it`s black back with white writing and show you the line where you may choose your 1 of 2.

 

hopefull if it`s partitioned seperately, you`ll know the path where the one you wish to get rid of is held.

 

go into DOS and then into that partition, and delete *.*

you`ll have that partition empty then.

 

it`s up to you what you do with it after that

 

 

btw, is "Partition Magic" or "QuarterBack Tools" a Windows program or am I thinking of another platform?

[Pangloss]

Yeah you can remove one. But this can become a very complicated subject very quickly.

 

The easiest way to view and edit the list that appears on that screen is to do this:

- Go to Start, Control Panel, System

- Click on Advanced, then "Startup and Recovery"

- In the first section ("System Startup"), you should see an Edit button. Click it.

 

(By the way, if you uncheck those two boxes, it will automatically run the first option that's been appearing on that screen. If that's all you need, you might want to just do that. But if you've been selecting the other option, or you REALLY want to remove that other option, read on.)

 

Now you should have a text editor up with BOOT.INI open. This is where it gets really tricky. This uses the standard SCSI nomenclature, which used to be very common (but isn't used much anymore). You will likely see two operating systems listed in the lower section. This is where you have to be really careful. But at this point you can remove the one that's incorrect (if you know which one that is) and then that screen should no longer appear.

 

The details of how that naming convention works can be found here, along with a more thorough explanation of what we're talking about:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311578

 

Are you sure you actually have two operating systems loaded, or did you install maybe a dual-boot config with Linux or something, and then later remove it?

[Pangloss]

And yeah, you have to actually delete the contents of the partition before you edit BOOT.INI.

 

The easiest way to do that, however, is not what is described above. The "proper" way is to boot into the "correct" partition (the one you want to keep), and then do this:

 

- Go to Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management

- Go to the Disk Management module under Storage

- Locate the incorrect partition and delete it

 

(YT has a great suggestion there about Partition Magic, by the way, but it won't help you at the moment because it's only useful if you run into an issue *after* PM has been installed.)

[Dave]

I should probably point out that Pangloss's method won't remove the files on the hard drive that were installed. You'll have to remove those by hand, and carefully too. If I remember correctly, installing two versions on the same hard drive creates two different main windows folders on the C drive. If, if, if...

[YT2095]

yup, and to boot into DOS after looking at the batch file .BAT path, you`ll need to reset and boot off CD or Floppy into DOS, DON`T do it from yer HDD, as not all files will delete as it`ll think some are still in use

[Pangloss]

I cross-posted with Dave -- he's talking about my first post above (#6). Post #7 describes how to remove the files themselves.

 

One of the really serious dangers with doing this sort of thing is that you can easily end up deleting the partition that the BOOT.INI file actually resides on, which them makes the computer unbootable (until you replace that file somehow), even though it has an otherwise perfectly valid OS on it.

[YT2095]

another Tip is to make a Tag Directory in the one you want to kill, make it a Number so it`ll be towards the Top of the list, so 2095.dir for example, that way there will be no guess work involved when you start deleting files (yes, it`s been know that the wrong partition`s been deleted in the past!)

[Dak]

Wouldnt a really simple way of 'fixing' it without the risk of deleting partitions/editing the complicated part of the boot.ini be to simply change the bit of the boot.ini that says "timeout=30" to "timeout=1"?

 

Thatway, the screen would flash up and disapear and load the first partition, thus solving the problem (ok, its a dirty fix, but its safer than tinkering around in these areas if he's not entirely sure what he's doing.)

 

having said that, I'm not entirely comftorbal with the boot.ini, so I'd like to make it clear (to ps2huang) that im not reccomending to actually do my above 'fix'; if you want to do it, wait till someone else more knowledgeble than me has commented on it.

 

and make a boot-disk first, whatever you do.

 

[edit]sorry, just re-read the OP: the above wont do anything to free up memory, which is what ps2 was after[/edit]

[H2SO4]

guys, im pretty lost. I bought a laptop and got it in the mail a few days ago. I reformatted it becuase i just want a clean copy of winxp. I did all the reformatting flawlessly, now i have one healthy partition instead of three.

 

 

But heres my problem. Now, when i start my computer, it takes my to the OS choice menu, which was never there. I try to boot from the second choice, and it tells me a message that i can remember, but it tells me i cant boot from it or something. I dont think theres much data on it at all. I had a friend reformatte our family computer before i didnt know how to do it, and the same thing occured.

[Pangloss]

Wouldnt a really simple way of 'fixing' it without the risk of deleting partitions/editing the complicated part of the boot.ini be to simply change the bit of the boot.ini that says "timeout=30" to "timeout=1"?

 

Yes (actually 0 just makes it go away, if I remember correctly), but as I mentioned above there's an even easier way -- just uncheck the boxes in the GUI and don't open the file at all.

 

Also, I didn't mention this before, but if the uncheck deal doesn't work because you're having to select the SECOND entry, you can always simply designate a different partition using the "default" parameter in the first section by copying over the partition name from the second section.

 

 

But heres my problem. Now, when i start my computer, it takes my to the OS choice menu, which was never there.

 

Yah, that's the most common reason for this to happen. The funky thing about it is that you deleted the partition, so how can it possibly be remembering what your previous partition information was? Bizarre, isn't it?

 

What happens is that when you boot off the Windows CD it copies BOOT.INI into RAM, and when you reconfigure the partitions, instead of creating a new BOOT.INI file, it simply copies the old one back from RAM onto the hard drive, modifying it to suit (so it may not be exactly like the old OS menu).

 

Freaky, I know, but that's how it's worked since NT4 or 2000 (I forget which).

[radiohead]

First, got to start menu and right click on my computer, then go to manage >disk management. Are there two partitions on your HD?

[ps2huang]

Yeah you can remove one. But this can become a very complicated subject very quickly.

 

The easiest way to view and edit the list that appears on that screen is to do this:

- Go to Start' date=' Control Panel, System

- Click on Advanced, then "Startup and Recovery"

- In the first section ("System Startup"), you should see an Edit button. Click it.

 

(By the way, if you uncheck those two boxes, it will automatically run the first option that's been appearing on that screen. If that's all you need, you might want to just do that. But if you've been selecting the other option, or you REALLY want to remove that other option, read on.)

 

Now you should have a text editor up with BOOT.INI open. This is where it gets really tricky. This uses the standard SCSI nomenclature, which used to be very common (but isn't used much anymore). You will likely see two operating systems listed in the lower section. This is where you have to be really careful. But at this point you can remove the one that's incorrect (if you know which one that is) and then that screen should no longer appear.

 

The details of how that naming convention works can be found here, along with a more thorough explanation of what we're talking about:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311578

 

Are you sure you actually have two operating systems loaded, or did you install maybe a dual-boot config with Linux or something, and then later remove it?[/quote']

I went to the edit, and I see this:

[boot loader]

timeout=5

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

 

Actually I accidentally install an unwanted WinXP, and that is the first one, so I have to select second one everytime during that black background during time limit. So I just delete the first "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect" then it won't appear in my computer anymore??-

[Pangloss]

Ok, that's a very simple situation that arises sometimes when people do multiple installs, similar to what happened to H2SO4. Assuming the information you posted above is PERFECTLY CORRECT, this is very easy to resolve, becuase they are both pointing to the same partition. Obviously one of the entries is false, so all you have to do is determine which entry is the incorrect one, and remove it.

 

And that's very easy to do, because if you look closely at the entry you'll notice that one of them indicates that Windows XP is installed to "C:\WINNT", and the other one is installed to "C:\WINDOWS". Obviously both of these cannot be true. Delete the one that is not, and you're done. (You seem to be indicating in your last post that the C:\WINNT one is valid, so that's fine.)

 

Don't do *anything* in Computer Management. That doesn't appear to apply in your case. Don't delete any files from your hard drive. Don't remove any partitions.

 

But before you edit that BOOT.INI file, just pop open Windows Explorer and make SURE that you have a C:\WINNT folder, and do NOT have a C:\WINDOWS folder. If you have BOTH, then you could have a much more complicated problem that requires further investigation to resolve.

[ps2huang]

If I delete one of them, will that operating system gone forever? To free up more my space? Also I did go to computer management, and see the false one is in NTFS, the real one which I am using now is in Fat. But as I tried, there is no deletion given there.

[Pangloss]

Oh ok, so you did actually do what that BOOT.INI file seems to indicate? You actually installed Windows XP twice to the same partition?

 

In that case you're going to have to remove the unwanted partition. You can probably just delete the C:\Windows directory (if that's the one you don't want), but here is the problem you may run into: Any programs you have installed after you finished installing the operating system may have incorrectly interpretted the location if the system files. Many installers are hard-coded to look for C:\windows, rather than prompt the OS for the location or use the old %SYSTEMROOT% nomenclature. And sometimes even if the installer appeared to function correctly, it may not have. Some files may be in the correct places. Others may not.

 

And there's another issue -- when you go to uninstall some programs, they may get confused over the same issue. They could break, look in the wrong places for their files, or many other wierd possibilities.

 

What I'm saying is that some of your applications may cease functioning. Or you may have no issues at all. It's pot luck. And you HAVE to resolve this, because the longer you wait, the worse it may get.

 

Learn a lesson from this: Never install two operating systems to the same partition. Ever.

[ps2huang]

I said: one installed to Fat; another one NTFS. I want to delete the freaking one from NTFS so my computer will get bigger space.

[Pangloss]

I'm afraid that's not what your BOOT.INI file indicates.

 

Why don't you look in Windows Explorer and see if both directories are actually present? Do you have both a C:\windows and a C:\winnt?

 

While we're on the subject, do you have any other partitions or hard drives in the system?

[ps2huang]

I'm afraid that's not what your BOOT.INI file indicates.

 

Why don't you look in Windows Explorer and see if both directories are actually present? Do you have both a C:\windows and a C:\winnt?

 

While we're on the subject' date=' do you have any other partitions or hard drives in the system?[/quote']

How do I get to Window Explorer?

Sorry I am a computer beginnger

[Pangloss]

It's ok. Windows Explorer is the file browser utility. It's the other way you can copy and move files around.

 

If you're not familiar with it, you can get the same information by opening My Computer and looking there.

[ps2huang]

Gosh

you are making it complicated

Just give me a brief way to delete the unwanted WIn System

Plus, I am using Chinese Win XP, you gotta tell me in detail

[Dave]

We're trying to tell you, but unfortunately it's quite complex. If you get it wrong, you could delete the wrong version, and that can lead to all sorts of problems.