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Am currently experiencing a few problems with my installation of XP Pro SP2 and I'm hoping someone can give me some pointers.
My problems began when I decided to try setting up dual OS, using my secondary (and previously virtually unused) internal HD for the installation and chose Ubuntu "Dapper Drake", simply to take a look and trial it for a while.
Installation was simple enough and all seemed to go well, until I tried to reboot. When my PC tried to access the boot sector, an app installed by Ubuntu continaully reported an error and everything ground to a halt.
I tried everything I could think of to regain control, but, with limited knowledge of boot procedures, I did not want to tinker too much.
The only way I could find to rectify the problem was to intall XP over the Linux setup on my 2nd HD. For reasons that I still don't understand, XP setup decided that even after doing this, it requested, on reboot that setup needed my XP intallation disk and proceded to update/replace the majority of XP files on my main OS drive also.
After all this, I now have my PC funtioning again, with a few anomolies...

*Even though I have now formatted the 2nd drive (leaving me just my original OS), I still have the "Select OS" menu with two identical options listed during bootup. How can I get rid of this??

*My Internal DVDRW drive (Sony DW-G120A), reports as working properly in Device manager and seems fine in My Computer, until I insert a blank DVD-R, at which point it reports as a CD drive and will not let me access it or write to it. It was working fine before the Ubuntu problem.

I have not really noticed any other problems as yet... Everything else works OK. Hopefully someone can help me resolve these and I'll be back to where I was with a smooth running sytem again.

Don't know if it's useful, but I've run through the "Prework" routines as advised in numerous places on this forum and I've attached the "Hijackthis" log file.

Cheers in advance for any advice...

Betterspud

*Even though I have now formatted the 2nd drive (leaving me just my original OS), I still have the "Select OS" menu with two identical options listed during bootup. How can I get rid of this??

This is about all I can help you on....

Right click on My Computer and go to Properties/Advanced/Startup and Recovery/Setting/ if you click on Edit you should find both in there and you can remove one.


As for you log its fine.No prblems.

All I get in Startup and Recovery is as follows...

[boot loader]
timeout=11
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
signature(5c109ae4)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WIN DOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

...not sure, but this looks like the boot record of only a single OS. If I'm wrong, I'd be gratful for some advice on what to edit.

Cheers

Mine is a single system and this it what it looks like


[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional Safeboot" /fastdetect /execute /



I think we need someone with a duel boot to compare against and see if that has the added lines that you have.

Hi betterspud, your boot.ini file looks more like it has 2 versions of Windows XP Professional Installed.

The boot.ini file is located on your C: (your windows partition) which is always the first boot device set in your BIOS (most likely). So even formatting the other hard drive won't effect the boot process.

You can easily remove this option. Goto System Properties -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery Settings -> Edit


Is what it should look like.
This will give you the option of 1 windows selection.If you change timeout to 0 instead of 11, this will not even show it anymore.

Thanks for confirming that.I was sure there were two boot options there.

Yea, for some reason it doesn't look like a complete dual boot.ini file, but it had the entries in there for 2...wierd.