Hi, I've got two hard disks, one is a 120 GB and the other is a 20 GB. I got my hands on a copy of Windows Vista Beta and installed it on my D: drive, being the 20 GB hard disk. It ran way to slow so i formatted the disk and the Boot menu continued to bring up both OS, so i formatted the D: drive again in XP, but it insists on bringing up the boot menu! Here is what my boot.ini file has in it but what can i take out to remove the OS from the boot menu???: [boot loader] timeout=0 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 /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN The boot Menu also defaults to Vista which really sux because then it will try and run vista when i start up and leave the computer to start on its own. Any help or ideas would greatly be appreciated! Thanks in advanced!!!! Once a hack always a hack

I'm not familiar with the bootfiles that Vista uses but the boot.ini file you have described above does not resemble any multiboot I've seen before. When you next boot up into XP you should click START, rightclick MY COMPUTER and select Properties>advanced>startup and recovery. In the Startup section do you have two Windows systems available in the Default menu? If so then set XP as the default and timeout to any figure between zero and 30 seconds. If this doesn't help then vista obviously puts some other bootfile in place that overrides or bypasses the boot.ini. Maybe someone who has vista experience can help further. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

OK first of to remove Vista from the Boot menu try this. Start-run-msconfig. Then go to the boot.ini tab and click "Check all boot paths" This should detect that Vista's not there and remove it from the list. This should fix the Starting up problem aswell.

Sorry, i forgot to include this message that was in the boot.ini file: Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems. ;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options. But i cant seem to find that file on my hard disks at all, because i did a search of both hard disks And only XP shows up in both the startup/recovery area and MSCONFIG!! Any more ideas???? Once a hack always a hack

What version was that 5308 or 5342 ? Your 3.2GHz P4 with 1GB memory should run that thing without much lag, I dual boot 5308 and XP Pro on a 3400+ A64 "Clawhammer" and there is no lag on my machine. Anyhow, Windows has always been notorious for obsolescing computer end user's hardware prematurely and Vista is right on course as evidenced by this experience. You better start saving up for a new more GHz "Intel" rig....LOL Now with regards to Bcdedit.exe, it is natively located in the \Windows\System32 folder of your Vista installation partition (wherever that is) on your computer HDD(s). I doubt you can do much with it other delete that grizzly beast. I found myself fiddling with it a couple times but I didn't do any extensive manipulation because I didn't want to butcher my dual boot a second time. I guess you have nothing to lose since you've got a fresh install or Windows sans Vista. I believe Grusomhat gave you a hint that I might have tried a while back, but I'm going to log out of Vista right now and log in to XP Pro to take a look at its msconfig and see where and what exactly you need to do in there. When Google isn't your best pal

As it turns out the option that I was looking for was in Vista's msconfig and not in XP Pro's. Run can run FIXBOOT and FIXMBR to correct it.

It is version 5342! But the problem with the 2 commands that you have given me is that Vista has been wiped from the D:\ drive totally, but i believe a fromat wont get rid of boot sectors so what can i do? Do i need to reinstall Vista on D:\ drive to get to the Bcdedit.exe file? (P.S. Vista ran slow because of the old and crap hard disk that it was installed on) Once a hack always a hack