Weird problem..

Hello,

I'm having a problem with my Windows 2000 computer. My brother was installing Windows XP Pro on a friends Hard Drive but left our harddrive connect and set the other one as master instead. Well, first whenever I would start up my computer I would get two options Windows 2000 Professional or install Windows XP. Then I don't know what my brother did but it changed from "Install Windows XP" to "Windows (undefined)" (All in spanish, since the WinXP installation was in spanish). I'm confused, could it be that it's partitioned? If so how do I un-partition it (I forgot :P Last time I did that was when I removed my Linux partition about 2 years a go)

So you're just trying to get the boot options to give you the option back to choosing between Xp and 2000, or rename what the options say? Or did I mis-interpret.

What I want to do is remove it completly so Windows 2000 just boots up normally.

Control Panel > System > Advance > System and startup(settings) > Edit > From here, you'll just edit the boot.ini so it only brings up the Windows 2000.

Well, first of all, under the advanced tab there is only "Startup and recovery" and when I click it, there is no edit button. NOTE: I have windows 2000 professional.

If you have backups of all your stuff or the ones you need,boot from your win 2000 cd and see if you do not have a repair option like in xp...if not then partition it and reformat the drive.That would be the best option i think

Maybe I'm still not getting the problem here....but doesn't he just want to edit the boot.ini so it automatically loads the 2000 partition?

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Originally posted here by SirSub
Maybe I'm still not getting the problem here....but doesn't he just want to edit the boot.ini so it automatically loads the 2000 partition?

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If it is in fact a partition, I want to remove the partition, so that way only Windows 2000 boots up. However, I'm uncertain weather it is a partition or not. I should probably download partitionmagic, it's simpler, what do you think?

I think a clean install would be best..Even if he does manage to change it , there might be some other references in the registry that could complicate the whole situation..What you could do is if your hdd is big enough,boot from the cd or you can use partition magic if you want and create a partition with the empty space available and install 2000 to that one without destroying your other data,save what you have to on that and then just format the partitions accept the boot one you created..

Alternatively you can unplug you hdd, plug in another hdd or flash disk big enough to load your o/system and work from there.

hope it helps
cheers
vanman

Whatever you do, I don't think using partition magic(tragic?) is such a good idea. I've used it once and it screwed up my entire partition table. A couple of friends also had the same problem. XP has it's own partition manager in computer management>storage space>disk management. Maybe 2000 has something of the same? After all, you just want to reformat the partition and use for something else right. After that it's just a matter of editing boot.ini using a text editor and you're done.

Hi Raion

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Well, first of all, under the advanced tab there is only "Startup and recovery" and when I click it, there is no edit button. NOTE: I have windows 2000 professional.

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What does it show in the "default operating system" box?

Also in windows explorer, how big does it say your "C:\" and any other valid partitions are? Does this come to the total drive size?

In Win2000 you can see Fat32 and NTFS partitions so you should be able to see if your drive has been partitioned or not? I suspect that the problem is not with your drive but with your startup program.

I agree with the other posters don't use partition magic

:)

Thank you all for your advice, apparantly my brother fixed it but is being too childish to tell me how he did it at the moment. All he tells me is "I removed the dual booting" which I figured was a partition but he told me no, there was no partition.

Yes, it would be in the startup program, and not a partition. If it were a partition you would have seen it :)

You might still look at the default operating system box to see if there is another option, but he could have just deleted it.

Cheers

SirSub already hinted in the right direction.. Your brother editted c:\boot.ini and removed the "windows Xp" option...