Hello all. I have recently bought a second hand laptop (sony vaio) which has the hard drive partitioned into C & D. Upon start up I am offered then option of starting windows XP, Windows XP or windows 2000. It seems XP has been installed twice as clicking on 1 XP will open the pc and show no other software loaded but clicking on the other wil show a variety of software loaded such as word and excel. I really want to delete 1 of the Xp's and 2000 as I don't see the point of having so many versions. How do i delete them? Bear in mind i want to retain 1 version of XP (the one with all the software loaded). many thanks paul

Well u cant format those partition example u should have a xp on C: the other on d: and windows 2000 on F: so you format d and F then u still have one xp on c: ok...then you edit your boot.ini liks this= [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows Xp " /fastdetect to edit your boot.ini go onto run and type c:\boot.ini and hit enter .. i hope this help you !

Be careful!!!

thanks v much

Formatting?!? Are you crazy??? DON'T FORMAT ANYTHING !!!!! Until you look at and understand the references in the boot.ini the above advice is the fastest way I know to lose your system. First step is determining which boot option is which and where its folder resides. Since you have c: and d: [no f:] look at the partition number of each boot reference in the boot.ini. Partition1 is c: and partition2 is d: I would suggest posting your boot.ini here so we can see where each xp and the 2k installs are located to better advise you. You very well could have multiple installs on c: and this would be difficult to break down what and what not to remove since there is a commonality concerning folder structure with the two OS's.

Hi. Get yourself a copy of Partition Magic. No computer should be without it and it makes what you want to do a piece of cake. Good luck. Stewart

Um there are multiple os's installed. No repartitioning required. He has three OS's to choose from and only wants to boot one. How is PM going to sort out the multiple os issue?