I recently formatted and my computer detetcs two xp pros. thios is impossible. physically I only have one HD and the amount of space the working windows version detects as being used is about 4 gigs :the size of one install. at the bootscreen if I select the other xp, it fails to load, saying windows can't detect a hard drive. how do I get rid of this second installed verison that doesn't even exist? there are no partitions, there is only one windows folder.

Edit the boot.ini and remove the entry for the one that does not load properly. You may want to play safe and create a backup of the boot.ini in case you remove the wronge entry.

Press The Windows Key (The one like a flag) + Pause or Go to Control panel and then select System. On the System Properties window: 1.- Go to Advanced 2.- Go to Startup and Recovery and click Settings . Now... you can just disable the message from showing... or you can edit the Boot file. To just disable the message: - Select the current operative system in the list (should be XP) Uncheck the two first checkboxes (Time to display...etc) To remove the entry from the boot file: - Click Edit Under [operating systems] just leave the line corresponding to your current OS (windows xp home or pro... just make sure you leave the whole line) It should look like this: [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="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn ----- GK-One @ Undernet <gk-one@irchelper.org> #IRCayuda Founding Member