Think i have managed to install windows twice! :-(

[Deano440]

Hi,

Hopefully one of you clever people will be able to help me as I am lost!!

I today used my recovery disk to try and repair my copy of XP which I have had to do several times since owning this laptop as it seems to be the most unstable PC I have ever owned. I put in the disk but was not given the option as I usually am to repair, it went straight into upgrading my current version, which seemed wrong but I was not given any other option.

The recovery went fine until I got to the stage of registering with Microsoft (which I don’t think I normally have to do when repairing…), this failed. So I used the telephone service which told me I was trying to install my copy of XP on more than one PC, which I am not…

So I decided that the installation must have gone wrong, so tried the recovery CD again. This time I was given the option to repair which I did but was then asked which installation of XP I would like to repair… so I now know the problem is that I have two installations on the same PC, but don’t have a clue how to solve it…

Can anyone give me any advice on how to fix this? Can I delete the second installation and then repair the original one?

Any advice at all would be really appreciated as the clock is ticking on my 1 day to register, and I don’t know how to revert to the first installation…

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Welcome to the Windows Forum.

A couple of questions:

• when you boot up, do you get a boot screen; i.e. a selection of multiple Windows systems to boot?
  
• do you suddenly have more than one partition, e.g. C: and D: (or E:) ?
  
• on your C: (root) partition, do you have a file named boot.ini? If you have, can you copy its content and paste it here in a

  wrapper?
  

[Boris]

This is how you can remove the Windows installation that you do not want

1. Start the Windows operating system that you want to keep.

2. To determine the Windows folder that you do want to keep

Click Start,

click Run,

type %windir%

click OK.

Remember the folder that is opened.

For example, the folder may be called C:\Windows or C:\Windows.0

Note This is your "working" Windows folder.

Do not delete or remove this folder from the partition.

3. In Windows Explorer, find the other Windows folder - the one that you want to remove.

Important

Make sure that this folder is not the folder that you identified as your "working" Windows folder in step 2.

4. Right-click the Windows folder that you want to remove, and then click Delete.

5. Click Yes to confirm the deletion of the folder.

6. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.

7. On the Advanced tab, under Startup and Recovery, click Settings.

The Startup and Recovery dialog box appears.

8. Under System startup, click Edit to modify the Boot.ini file.

The Boot.ini file opens in Notepad and should look similar to the following:[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 Home" /fastdetect

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

9. On the File menu in Notepad, click Save As, and then save this as Boot.old - ( a backup copy of the original Boot.ini file)

10. On the File menu, click Exit to close the backup copy of the Boot.ini file you have just created.

11. In the Startup and Recovery dialog box, under System startup, click Edit to reopen the Boot.ini file.

12. In the [boot loader] section of the Boot.ini file, identify and then delete the line of text for the Windows operating system that you want to remove.

For example, if the Windows folder that you removed in step 4 was for the second Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition operating system listed (Windows.0),

remove the following line of text from the Boot.ini file:multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0="Microsoft Windows XP Home" /fastdetect

13. On the File menu, click Save to save your changes to the Boot.ini file.

14. On the File menu, click Exit to close the Boot.ini file.

15. Click OK to close the Startup and Recovery dialog box.