XP Startup - Regular or Install

[Kahuna]

When my laptop goes through startup, I get a text choice of starting up or installing XP Pro

XP Pro is installed and working fine but this menu comes up every time I startup.

Any ideas?

[andyms18a]

right click my computer click properties then addvanced then startup and recovery at the top click edit and remove the line which says install hit save or ok reboot to check

[Kahuna]

I feel like a total dope.

I took too much out of the boot.ini file and now the computer will not boot up at all. In the old days, I would just create a boot disk and fix the file but that process is not clear.

Any ideas?

[doctorgonzo]

Do you have a Windows XP cd around? Boot from the CD and go to the repair console. You should be able to edit boot.ini from there, or possibly run the fixboot command. One of those will hopefully work.

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

I found two things: http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;330184 , which does not directly relate to your problem, but it describes how to rebuild the boot.ini file. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=291980 Describes how to use Bootcfg, I am not sure whether you should delete the existing boot.ini or just rebuild it, although I'm sure someone else will advise you.

[Kahuna]

I have the Toshiba recovery disk and the XP Pro upgrade disk. Neither will get the box up where I can do anything - blank screen. The "Toshiba" screen flashes briefly, the cd drive fires up but nothing on the screen.

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

Is the XP CD higher in the BIOS boot order than the Hard drive?

[Kahuna]

I can't tell on the bios order, I got nothing to work with. The screen flashes "Toshiba" for a brief second and then goes away. I have tried booting with the del key pressed to access the bios and have even tried the ctrl & ins keys.

puzzled.

[doctorgonzo]

Originally Posted by Kahuna I can't tell on the bios order, I got nothing to work with. The screen flashes "Toshiba" for a brief second and then goes away. I have tried booting with the del key pressed to access the bios and have even tried the ctrl & ins keys. puzzled.

Try F1, F2, F10 keys too.

Also try Esc

[Kahuna]

All:

Thanks a million!

F2 got me into the bios. Moved CD up the list and booted off the XP Pro upgrade disk. From there went to repair and got to a c:\windows prompt. From there I was able to rename the boot.bak file to boot.ini and that fixed my problem.

Thanks to all for your help.

[WhatsThisBoxFor?]

Good you got that the problem solved. You might want to make another backup of the boot file, if you renamed the old one there will be no backup, since if something like this happens again you will have another backup to use.