Windows XP screen when booting up 1

[JeffPr]

I recently switched my primary master and slave hard drives around and when I boot from the slave this screen comes up and asks me which OS I want to load. I have windows XP Pro and Home and so I can choose one and then it boots, one OS is on each hard drive. I had some problems and had to install XP Pro 2 more times and so when that screen comes up it still has those old version there but it won't read them. When I click on them the only thing I get is the following error.

<window root>\system32\hal.dll file was unable to load or is corrupted.

I want to find out what that screen is so I can remove those old two version of XP Pro and just keep the working one along with the XP home. Does anybody know what this screen is, why it appeared, and how do I edit what is displayed? Does windows come with its own boot loader or something?

Do you think your friend could feed my cat? Heisenberg wasn't sure. ~ Erwin Schrodinger talking of his revolutionary paradox

 

[gpalmer711]

The file you are looking for is boot.ini and is located on your default startup drive (normally c:\boot.ini).

Make a copy of this file and then open it in notepad.

Remove the entries you do not require and then restart the machine.

If your machine will not start just restore the copy you took and then post the contents of your ini file her so we can make the ammendments for you.

Greg Palmer

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Any feed back is appreciated.

 

[JeffPr]

I did a search for a file with the extension .ini but I couldn't find anything on any of my hard drives. Is there another file that I might be looking for or maybe boot with a different extension. I will keep looking for something and you can let me know what you think. Thanks.

Do you think your friend could feed my cat? Heisenberg wasn't sure. ~ Erwin Schrodinger talking of his revolutionary paradox

 

[gpalmer711]

it may be that you just can't see ini files at the moment. It is a default setting of xp to hide these files.

To view them open my computer or windows explorer

Click on Tools Then Folder Options

One of the options is Hide Protected Operating System files.

Untick this option and then look for the file again.

This is deffinatly the only file that windows uses when booting.

Greg Palmer

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Any feed back is appreciated.

 

[JeffPr]

I searched all my hard drives and looked at most of the configuration settings on all my hard drives and found everything but the text for that screen that comes up. It must be a configuration setting because I think those are the files the computer uses to display text like that, so is there another name that file could have?

Do you think your friend could feed my cat? Heisenberg wasn't sure. ~ Erwin Schrodinger talking of his revolutionary paradox

 

[JeffPr]

Thanks alot Greg for your help. As soon as I did that the file appeared right on my C: drive and allowed me to edit it. I have another question now. I have linux on my other hard drive but windows won't pick it up and in order to boot linux I have to go to my BIOS and switch my boot sequence to my primary hard drive and then linux boots fine. Is there any way I can edit those configuration settings in boot.ini to have the option to boot linux? The bootloader I am using for linux is GRUB. Thanks for the help.

Do you think your friend could feed my cat? Heisenberg wasn't sure. ~ Erwin Schrodinger talking of his revolutionary paradox

 

[gpalmer711]

Hi,
I dont use linux myself but the following site should point you in the right direction. If not let me know.

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

Greg Palmer

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Any feed back is appreciated.