Odd problem - I wanted to install RAID/ACHI drivers and had some difficulties doing that, but finally got that accomplished. It took me 4 or 5 installs of XP to finally get it done. In each case, I simply reinstalled over the old installation - The machine boots into windows fine but I now get a screen during boot that lists 5 identical Win XP installs and asks me which one I want to use -(This is the screen you ususally see if you have more than 1 OS and can boot to one or the other).There is only one copy of XP on the machine. I can choose one and move on or the system will move on in 10 or 15 seconds, but it is unnecessary and a pain. - Each prior install obviously left some trace that the system thinks is another OS or XP variant - Can I remove them and not have that screen appear, or do I have to reformat and start over (Sigh...)

Any and all help appreciated

Steve


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ASUS P5B Deluxe, E660, stock cooler, GSKill 2GB 800, x1950XT, Lian Li case, Corsair 520, 2 500 GB SATA 2, SATA OD, floppy

Go into msconfig, BOOT.INI, and at the top you can delete all but the lines that you need you don't need, They're the longest one and start with multi(0)disk(0) etc

I went back to the set up file as you suggested

The setup showed the following:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.7
[ope rating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.7="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.5="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.4="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.3="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


Seeing that I went to the root drive of c: and I have 8 (Count 'em 8) Windows directories

Windows
Windows.1
Windows.2
Windows.3
Windows.4...


Windo ws.7


Some represent full installs - some represent failed installs (I suspect 3,4,5,7 are the sucessful installs and 1,2,and 6 represent the failed installs)

Windows.7 is the install that I got right with installation of ACHI SATA drivers/controller

What to do now...

I would like my active windows directory to be Windows rather than Windows.7 (Life will be so much easier down the road)

can I simply delete windows through windows.6 and then rename windows.7 to windows and then just edit the boot record above
After editing it would look like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[opera ting systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

-OR-

delete all the files and reinstall

-OR-
reformat and reinstall

-OR-
something else ...

Many thanks for getting me on the right road

Steve

If 7 is the good install, you can just delete the remaining 6 lines. I don't know if this would automatically reset windows 7 to windows or if you can manually change it from windows 7 to windows if it's not automatically changed. I did this on a machine with one bad install but with 6 bad ones, I think I would do a complete clean install of Windows because you're going to have files from the previous bad installs on the computer. What I would do is back up all my data and then delete the 6 lines referencing bad installs to see what happens. Windows boots and you have no problems, you know you can do this and it will work. But again 6 previous installs are a lot. If you decide to do a clean install, do a full format when asked and then install, this should wipe everything on the drive/partition out. If you have more than one drive in the system, disconnect all but the one you're installing Windows on, then reconnect the drives after Windows has been installed and updated..

Here is what I did:

I changed the boot list and deleted Windows through Windows.6 and booted the system - no problem. I then deleted the windows directories (windows through windows.6) and again booted (windows.7 is the only remaining).Again no problem. I then changed the boot log to change windows.7 to windows. I then tried to rename windows.7 to windows and the system obtstinately would not let me change the name or even change the attributes so I could rename.

So I reformated the disk and reloaded the OS - All done.. System works fine-
This was a lot of work to be able to load the ACHI drivers, and I'm not sure why I wanted to or if I'll ever use them. But I finally beat the silicon...

Many thanks for your help.

Steve

Glad it worked. Long term you've probably saved yourself some aggravation with a clean install. On the upside, you have a work around if this happens again, at least until you're ready to blow off a couple of days reinstalling Windows, programs, and getting the machine the way you want. Plus you beat the silicon and a win is always gratifying

Isn't that the truth!

Many thanks!

Steve