??? about XP boot records

[MGood777]

I recently swapped out hard drives in a machine running XP. I used DriveImage to copy the old drive to the new drive. For some reason I had to re-do the copy a couple of times before I could actually boot from the new drive. (It kept hanging up at the XP intro screen.) In the end though, it all came out OK and the new drive works fine.

However, because I had to do the copy multiple times, there are now multiple boot records on the new drive. I've got XP to default to the record that I want so that I don't have to go through the boot options screen, but I would like to delete the unnecessary boot records just to be safe and avoid problems in the future.

Anybody know if there's a way to do that??? Thanks in advance.

[doctorgonzo]

You have to edit the boot.ini file in the root directory of your C: drive. Mine looks like this (with Win2K):

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

The problem you have is that you have more than one line under [operating systems]. You have to remove all the lines but the one that refers to your Windows XP installation. If you are unsure of what do you, post the contents of your boot.ini file here and we can tell you what to do.

[MGood777]

I couldn't find a boot.ini file in XP, but I did find that the "startup and recovery" tab in the System Properties box allows you to edit a file that looks like your script. I will try that and see if it works. Thanks for the input, Gonzo.

[doctorgonzo]

Yep, that box in the "System Properties" dialog just shows the contents of the boot.ini file.

For future reference in case you want to edit it yourself, boot.ini is a hidden file so you have enable Explorer to show it. Just go to the C:\ director in Explorer, then click on Tools...Folder Options...View tab and click on the "Show hidden files and folders" radio button.