Strange problem. I was in the process of installing a new HDD and installing win2k (matching hardware and software if you’re asking). The old disk was set to master but bios settings were to boot from the slave.
Part way through the installation the system reboots before continuing to transfer files and set the settings. At this point the installation swapped drives and continued the installation over the top of my already existing disk.
Now when I boot up on the old drive it comes up with a boot menu asking if I want to booot win 2000 or win 2000. The second of these is my original system. the first is a new installation of the operating system with none of my software installed.
So, I have two installations of the same operating system on the same partition of the same disk. I find only one set of system files, but I assume that there must be two registries.
My (obvious) question, is how do I go about removing the unwanted installation?
(Let me add that it may not be critical. I can actually do everything I need to by choosing the correct option at the boot menu. And in any case, once the newly installed disk has everything installed correctly on it, and all data transferred I will be erasing the old anyway. It just seemed to be an odd position to get into.)
There’s a hidden system file in your root directory (C:) called boot.ini. You’ll have to change your folder options so that you can view hidden and system files. Your boot.ini file may also be read only, so you may have to uncheck that as well before you can modify it. There will be an entry for each menu selection, in the order that they show up on your boot screen. Just delete the line for the OS you don’t want to show up there.
You only really have one OS installed (and one set of files) so that should be all you need to do.
-Remove the old hard drive from the machine, set the new one as master
-Format the new one and start the install again from scratch
-Reconnect the old hard drive as a slave only after the installation is complete
Seems like there’s nothing to lose from just re-doing the new installation, whereas trying to patch it up might have some consequences later such as stability problems or missing dlls or something.
Already done exactly that Mangetout.
Just to clarify, it was the old one that was playing interesting games. I tried ECG’s fix and it worked fine. I am now in the process of installing my accumulated software and settings onto the new system. Once that is all going well then the lod one will be … well, just another spare drive. (It’s not like I’m going to run out of space any time soon.)
Thanks for the clarification - I thought perhaps we were trying to work with a complete, but partially reinstalled old system, plus a new, but incomplete installation.
I had a similar problem with my sister’s machine - I removed the old drive, fitted the new one and installed Windows etc, then put the old one back as a slave - after that, very occasionally, the computer would try to boot from the old (slave) drive - I guess it must have been that the master was getting skipped due to some error or other - and there wasn’t any way to set the BIOS to simply fail if the first drive wouldn’t boot - it’s only possible to set the order.
I thought that reformatting the drive, without a bootable flag would do it, but even now, the computer sometimes just tries to boot from the slave, and falls over.