Hi,

I searched and did not find information on how to do this so if someone could help me it would be appreciated.

I have a Dell Dimension 4500 running XP home. I had two hard drives and was trying to get a clean install of XP on the second drive for another computer. After installing the second operating system at boot up I get a select operating system screen. This is after removing the other drive.
One operating system when selected returns an error and says files are missing, try to reboot, etc. The second choice boots the computer and everything is fine. I would like to remove the first operating system selection without harming the remaining operating system. They are identical in the description and want to be sure I do this correctly.

Thanks for any help!!!

Jeff

@jeff456: Just wondering if you solved your problem.

Hi Chrisretusn,

I have only just now been able to get to this. I have tried to fix this before by editing the boot.ini which is where I get stuck. I went to my computer>Properties>Advanced>default operating system.

I have two listed(in the order they appear as they appear in the pull down window. In the system selection menu the first doesn't work the second does):

"Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin/fastdetect

"Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect/NoExecute=OptIn

I don't want to delete the wrong one and I have no idea which is the correct one to delete!!!

Thank you,

Jeff

Hi PAN_IRISH,

No I have purchased XP for all the computers I have. It has been a while now so I don't even recall why I was trying to install XP that way except that the computer I needed to put the new drive in was giving me grief and I needed a way to get the operating system on the drive to see if that would solve my problems. Now it has been long enough that I didn't want to do a fresh install and chance loosin the stuff in the computer or screwing something else up.

Thanks for the reply. If all else fails I will either live with the selection screen or do a fresh install.

Jeff

Hi,

Well Murphy's law has stricken me again. I'm sure I do a lot to help that along so no crying here.

I tried the repair install last night and it didnt go well. This drive is nearly full to the point that I believe that is part of the problem. Rather than waste your time and mine trying to fix it I am going to get a new larger drive and pull my info off this drive by hooking it up as a secondary drive.

I have one new question if you can help. I have an IDE drive in a computer that can run SATA drives. If I swap that drive over to the bad computer would there be any noticable benefit to changing to a SATA drive. If so is it possible to swap the info from the IDE to the SATA. I dont use this computer for any heavy gaming. Mostly for family photos and video with some editing. I also upload to ebay and family photo album type hosting.

Thanks for your help and advice!!

Jeff

repairing windows XP;
http://theeldergeek.com/repairing_windows_xp.htm

Hi,

I think I'm going to go ahead with the SATA drive and swap the drive its replacing into the computer having the problems.

A couple more question I have is do you have a link to the procedure for this swap (IDE to SATA).

Is this a plug and play type change or are there drivers and such that need to be changed as well.

I am assuming that my HP compaq 530d CMT P4 2.67GHZ will support a 250GB SATA drive.

Aside from the cable is there anything else I should look to need for this swap?

Your help is very much appreciated. I went ahead a became a premium member the other day because the help here just cant be beat. Even though I encountered problems on this go round I think had the drive been in better shape to begin with it would have been a non issue.

Anyway, thanks and I look forward to any additional help you guys can provide on my new undertaking.

Jeff

all you need to do is to check and see if the mother board will support SATA and

>if it has SATA connections on it, you will be fine.<

don't have any other hard drives connected during the install of the operating system,
it will cause you further confusion.

Thanks Guys!!!

chrisretusn
I made a copy of the boot.ini while I was looking at it. Only problem is its saved in notepad to the desktop of the bad computer. It's gonna be several days but, when I get it going I'll paste a copy here.

I'm done as far as this help is concerned. You can either mark me done or if you want I can post back good or bad with the new attempt to get things right. Or if it's better I'll create a new post if I encounter problems.

jeff