I for the first time in my computing history had to perform a fresh re-install of my O/S .I had lost the ability to perform a factory restore because I had lost the administrator password and the PC would not let me move forward with a restore without this password .Well this actually turned out to be a blessing in disquise. I do not have all the Dell bloatware on my PC and Iam installing only the apps I need ! This time I left the administrator password blank ! My ? is my previous O/S install when booting up would go directly to the O/S after the Dell Splash screen ,however now it goes to a page that ask me which O/S do I want to load either WinXP Pro or WinXP MCE 2005 ? Now if I was to chose the WinXP Pro option ,it would say this O/S is not installed on the PC ,I believe even though WinXP MCE is WinXP Pro with a layer of the Media Center installed on top of it ,either way I would never have the need to chose the WinXP Pro option and Iam wondering how I can get my PC to stop offering me this option and go straight to loading WinXP MCE,is this a BIOS setting ,or a setting I change within the O/S ? Anyone who knows how to turn off this feature I would be greatful to you for supplying me with the instructions to eliminate this minor inconvience ? FYI ,after installing the O/S and all the needed drivers for my hardware my ATI TV Wonder Elite PCI TV Tuner card would not work ,I was getting no video decoder detected ,frantic I looked in the device manager and the TV Tuner card was not listed ,I tried re-installing the drivers again and still it would not initiate the live TV ? I opened my tower and switched the card to another PCI slot ,still no TV Wonder ,I had all but given up and since this TV Tuner card has a 3 year warranty I figured it was a hardware failure and I would have to return it for replacement ? Then I figured I would try something I all along felt I would have to do to have the neede video codec's installed ,I went ahead and installed my Cine Player application and the MY DVD Combo application by Roxio .Well that was the fix ,as soon as I was done testing the Cine player by poping a DVD in the PC and making sure it played which it did ,I opened the Media Center and tried configuring the TV card again and I was a happy camper when the live TV initiated ! It was a long day Sunday the O/S install and a few of my applications being installed took all day ,I still have several apps to be installed yet ! I want to thank all at Computing.net whom helped me with advise on preparing myself properly for a fresh install of the O/S which my neighbor a PC Programmer messed up the first attempt and I ended up with a bad install,go figure ! Take Care to All , Nick

Right click on My Computer and go to Properties. Click on the Advanced tab and go to settings under Startup and Recovery. Click on edit and back out the OS that does not exist anymore. Click on File and Save and you are done. Next time you restart you won't be prompted.

Just for clarity's sake, If you're being prompted to select an OS to load, then your install wasn't a "Fresh" install; it was an over the top install. By using the Dell Reinstallation CD, you don't need to know any passwords, as the CD will return your OS to the factory settings. Life's more painless for the brainless.

It seems that rather than formatting your existing XP partition and installing in there you ended up installing another copy of XP. Hence, you now have dual boot system which allows you to select your old OS (even though it is not bootable) or your newly installed one. If you are not interested in the original OS your best bet would be to clean the hard drive and reinstall otherwise you will be wasting the disk space in the first OS. Also most likely (depending on your disk / partition layout) your set up now means that your new OS has its boot files in the partition of the Old OS and therefore you cannot format that partition nor delete the boot files that are held in there. If you want to leave things as they are then you need to edit your boot.ini file to make sure that your new OS is the default and you can then set the timeout in the boot.ini file to zero (or something small) or delete the other old OS entry altogether from the boot.ini file. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

Well I beg to differ with you on the install being a over the top install of O/S ,when prompted during the installation proccess I did indeed reformat partition drive C ,and I picked the slow repartition task instead of the other express option that performs a quick format ! I've been told that WinXP MCE is actually WinXP Pro with the Media Center add on ? Perhaps thats why it offers you this option at bootup ? Also I have a partition drive F @ 5.88 G.B. of space ! My H.D. is a 250 G.B. Samsung and has 227 G.B. available on drive C ,the one I formatted and installed the O/S on ! I invite a response from you becasue I find this all very interesting,and want to thank you for your input . Take Care Nick

As I said, a complete repartition and format wouldn't allow the option of two OSs to boot to because the boot.ini file would have been deleted and recreated with the new load. MCE is not XP Pro with Media Center added on; they are two different Operating Systems. You stated you have a partition F that's 5.88 Gig and your OS drive is 227. Not sure if there is a question there, but are you wondering where the remaining HDD space is allocated? It's probably on the D drive, which would have been the partition created by Dell and used in case of a Factory Restore using the Reinstallation CD. Life's more painless for the brainless.

Jennifer SUMN is correct in her response number 5. If you want confirmation list your boot.ini file and you will see two entries in there pointing to two different partitions into which XP and XPMCE were installed. As an aside, Dell do installations (my daughter has one such on a laptop) where you are offered a dedicated media player environment to boot into or the full blown OS install. However, I doubt that you have that as you have already stated that previously you would boot straight into XP. The dedicated media environment is a cut down install of XP which only has installed into it those bits of the XP OS to allow you to use your laptop / desktop as say a DVD / Media player. The theory being that it performs better without the rest of the OS and Applications. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.