At 00:37 02/06/03, Rosie wrote:
>does anyone know how to delete one of those annoying Wix XP selections
>at bootup? <g>)

Hi Rosie

In WinNT and Win2k, you need to edit the c:\boot.ini file to
delete one of the boot selections. This is a text file and you
open it with NOTEPAD.

Maybe this will work with WinXP, which is after all supposed
to be next in line along the WinNT family tree.

If I want to delete one of the bootup selections, I would
delete one of the lines in Boot.ini.

When I boot, I see 3 choices in my boot menu. (I deleted 3
choices for brevity here.) I can boot to normal Win2k, Win2k
VGA mode, and Win2k safe mode. The actual descriptions that
I see in the menu at boot are exactly as shown inside the
pairs of quotation marks in the lines below.

When I open my Boot.ini with Notepad I see:

[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Win2K Pro" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Win2K Pro VGA
Mode" /fastdetect /BASEVIDEO
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Win2K Pro
Safe-Mode" /fastdetect /SAFEBOOT:MINIMAL /SOS /NOGUIBOOT

Note that some of these lines are long and might get broken
by email software along the way before you see them.
(There are only 7 lines in this boot.ini file.)

What's inside the quotation marks on the lines below where it
says [operating systems] is just window dressing. I could
replace what's inside each ofthe quotes with anything else
if I wanted...like "Win2k", "Safe Mode", etc. The boot menu
would look different but the computer would still boot the same
way as it does now.

I could delete any of these lines and end up with one less choice
in the boot menu. I could change the default item by modifying
the default line (3rd line). I could make the menu disappear
faster (before booting the default item) by changing the timeout
line. (The 5 means I have 5 seconds before the default is
automatically chosen.)

The multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) stuff means that my
operating system boot files are in the first partition of my
first hard disk. Don't mess with what you see here. (The first
logical disk is called disk 0 but the first partition is called
partition 1. Also note that I have SCSI drives instead of IDE
drives and the left end of your boot.ini choice lines may look
slightly different.)

I have no idea if this is the same with WinXP...but if it is, you
can fix your boot menu. Just be sure you don't lock yourself out
of an important choice...particularly if your boot drive is
partitioned as NTFS.

Regards,
Bill

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