Everytime I boot up my computer it asks if I want to go to XP home edition setup or load XP home. If I don’t click on XP home then it automatically goes into set up. This has been really frustrating. Is there anyway to deal with this? I just want it to automactically load XP. It’s driving me insane!!! :smack:
Dumb question…Is the XP setup CD or disk still in the drive?
If it’s not the CD thing like Joey suggested, is the choice presented on a black and white text screen that pops up before you get the screen that looks like this?
If so, it sounds like the bootloader config file has somehow managed to stay in the “setup” mode that XP uses to control reboots during the install process. This is controlled by a file called “boot.ini” found in the root directory of your system disk, so probably “C:\boot.ini”. It’s a system file, so it’ll probably be hidden; turn that off. If you open it up in notepad and paste the contents in a post here, I can tell you which bit to change so it defaults to loading XP normally. Don’t go changing it willy-nilly or your computer will become unbootable.
OTOH, if the choice pops up after the screen I linked to above, I’m afraid I don’t have a clue what’s going on.
Thanks for the replies. No, the XP CD is not still in the drive; I’m pretty bad with computers, but not quite that bad. Dead Badger , I will try your suggestion and see what happens.
OK, please talk to me like I’m six years old. I just ran msconfig and looked in the boot.ini file. I found this:
[Boot Loader]
Timeout 5
Default=C:$WIN_NT$~BT\BOOTSECT.DAT
[Operating Systems]
multi(0)disk(0) partion(2)\WINDOWS=“Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition”/fastdefect
C:$WIN_NT$.~BT.\BOOTSECT.DAT=“Microsoft Windows XP Setup”
Now what should I do? Any ideas? Thanks!
Yep, it’s set to boot the wrong thing by default. First, in msconfig, highlight the line reading
multi(0)disk(0)partion(2)\WINDOWS=“Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition”/fastdetect
and click the “set as default” button which should be just below it. That will make your PC default to boot normally, but the screen will still pop up for 5 seconds on every boot. If you want completely rid of the install option (i.e. if you’ve got a windows install CD), I think if you click the “check all boot paths” button in msconfig it’ll give you an option to get rid of the XP Setup boot entry.
One final thing is that you might get a message the first time you boot after altering the boot.ini, warning you that you’re using a modified boot.ini. You should be able to tell this message box to go away, after confirming that yes, you do want to use the modified one. Let me know if there are any problems…
Dead Badger’s instructions will work, but another, perhaps simpler, solution is to right click “My Computer” and select properties, click the “Advanced” tab, then click the “Settings” button under “Startup and Recovery”. You can select the default boot OS, along with the display time of the boot menu, as well as edit the file manually.
Sorry for the late reply; I was busy and didn’t get time to work on my computer. I just wanted to let you know that I tried your instructions and things seem to be working fine now. Thanks a lot for the help!