Windows 2000 Pro Question

[eastbayguy]

Got an installation of Windows 2000 Pro on my home system, a Dell. For reasons lost to the sands of time, a 2nd copy of W2K was installed on this machine. The presence of the 2nd installation caused a prompt to appear at boot time asking me which copy of W2K to boot from.

 

I've removed the 2nd copy of W2K, but the prompt asking me which copy to boot from has not. I'd very much like to make this prompt go away. Short of magical incantations, is there a way to do so?

 

(Preferably something without modifying the registry or anything especially arcane.)

 

--EBG

[Guy Fawkes]

That's controlled by "boot.ini" on your boot drive in the root directory. It's a hidden, read-only, system file.

 

Be sure you understand what you doing before you do it

 

Regards, Daddy

[+ deej]

Not sure if it will work in Win2K, but the old command-prompt command SYS used to take care of this.

 

From the preferred OS, issue

 

SYS <drive>:

 

It rewrites the boot.ini and the boot sector.

 

BACKUP FIRST! You may have to boot from a floppy to get it to work.

 

It's been a LONG time since I've had to do this. These days, I just bag it and start over from scratch.

[JamesK840]

>It's been a LONG time since I've had to do this. These days, I

>just bag it and start over from scratch.

 

That doesn't always clear crap entries from boot.ini I could swear sometimes install reads it in and then puts it back even after you've used it to reformat the only drive in the system.

 

Manually deleting the extra line in boot.ini is the best way.

[eastbayguy]

Thanks for the replies everyone. I took a look at the notes on the Microsoft web site about this. There is a way to do this via GUI, but, it doesn't really help in my particular case as there is no way to distinguish which copy of W2K is which via the GUI.

 

So, in taking a look at the boot.ini file, what's a good editor to use for that purpose these days? The thought also crosses my mind that now may be a good time to call for help from an expert. If I screw this up, I have no one to call for help. If someone else screws up, help is already here.

 

:-)

 

--EBG

[+ deej]

>>just bag it and start over from scratch.

>

>That doesn't always clear crap entries from boot.ini

 

James, you misunderstood me. When I said start from scratch, I meant from scratch.

 

I'll typically start with FORMAT C:, but I've also been known to start with FDISK when the problem is really bad. There isn't much left in boot.ini or the registry (or anything else) when you nuke the partition that holds it. :+

 

It's mercenary and probably overkill, but I completely nuke my primary computer annually and rebuild it from scratch. I install/uninstall enough software in a year's time to leave a lot of beta barf and orphaned registry settings. It's good to start with a clean slate.

 

Of course, the annual cycle usually coincides with a replacement cycle so I'm also building a machine from scratch to send off to cousin Eunice. ;-)

[+ deej]

>So, in taking a look at the boot.ini file, what's a good

>editor to use for that purpose these days?

 

It's an ASCII file. Notepad (or EDLIN) still works. Of course, it's a hidden/system file so all bets are off.

 

Mine looks like this (watch out for word wrap):

 

[boot loader]

timeout=0

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

 

>If someone else screws up, help is already here.

 

You'd think. x(

 

The other thing you could do, through the GUI, is just set your timeout value to 0. You'd never see the prompt for which OS.

[eastbayguy]

>The other thing you could do, through the GUI, is just set

>your timeout value to 0. You'd never see the prompt for which

>OS.

 

One of the systems is bootable, one isn't. If I set the timeout to zero, will the system just automagically pick the right one and boot? What happens if the system waits zero seconds and picks the wrong one?

 

This is one of those things I feel the need to clear up because it just seems like there is a risk by not doing so. Seems like a variable left to chance.

 

Again, thanks to everyone for your help on this. Much appreciated.

 

--EBG

[+ deej]

>One of the systems is bootable, one isn't. If I set the

>timeout to zero, will the system just automagically pick the

>right one and boot? What happens if the system waits zero

>seconds and picks the wrong one?

 

You set the default system through the same GUI where you set the timeout:

 

Control Panel->System->Advanced, Startup and Recovery. You choose which system is default and whether to display the list of operating systems. (Didn't have my Win2K machine running when I wrote last, so I wasn't sure exactly where it was. Now I'm sure.)

 

To be smart about this, make sure you've got the right system selected as default BEFORE you disable the prompt.

 

>This is one of those things I feel the need to clear up

>because it just seems like there is a risk by not doing so.

>Seems like a variable left to chance.

 

Well, even this won't get rid of the "problem". It'll only hide it.

[JamesK840]

Yeah, takes too much time for me to boot into Recovery Console, fdisk, etc, then reboot for setup, so I just tell it not to repair, delete any partitions, have it create a new one (NTFS, of course!) and am off, I usually let in do a full format though.

 

If I was worried about that kinda thing I'd use a boot floppy with some kind of special drive wipe program.

 

On the figuring out which is which in boot.ini: Change what's in the quotes! Add a #1 and a #2 before the endquote for the two entries, then once you know for sure delete the worthless one and remove the number. BTW, when there's only on entry in Boot.ini it doesn't stop to ask now.