At 23:08 12/10/04, Gordon Totty wrote:
>I just set up a computer for my daughter after the system board
>in her old one stopped working. I transferred her old HDD over...
>It was running Windows Me. I had a lot of error messages, etc.,
>so finally decided to upgrade the computer to Windows 2000.
>
>That worked fine, but for one remaining minor annoyance.
>
>Now, on boot, there is a start-up message asking for a selection
>of which OS to load: Windows 2000 or "Microsoft Windows." If no
>answer is given in 30 seconds, the computer boots to Windows 2000,
>the only OS installed. I've been trying to find out how to eliminate
>this screen.


Hi Gordon

Go to Control Panel, click on "System", then the "Advanced" tab.
Choose "Startup and Recovery" (the bottom button in the Advanced
tab).

 From the dropdown menu at the top of "Startup and Recovery", choose
the operating system that you want to boot...presumably "Microsoft
Windows 2000" /Fastdetect. (The exact name inside the quote marks
isn't important. What follows the slash mark is.)

Take the check mark out of the next box ("display a list of operating
systems for [30] seconds") to get rid of the boot menu. Or enter a
small enough number of seconds in the seconds box that you can
live with the start menu at boot. It can be useful to have the Safe
Mode choice appear for a few seconds...just in case it's needed
sometime.

That's the quick way to solve your problem. Here's the rest:

The other way is to edit the C:\boot.ini file. (Boot.ini is a text
file that you can view and edit using Notepad.)

Editing boot.ini is the equivalent of making changes using the Startup
and Recovery applet in Control Panel. (You can edit the file to choose
the default operating system at boot and the time that the menu shows
on screen.) But by editing boot.ini, you can do more...you can delete
or rename the operating system choices in the boot menu. (The names of
the operating system choices are arbitrary. It's the drive and
partition numbers that are important, as well as the "switches"
that follow "/" marks.)

Before changing the contents of boot.ini you will have to remove its
"Read-only" file attribute. (Right click on the boot.ini and choose
"Properties". The "Read-only" attribute is at the bottom of the box.)

WARNING! If you delete choices for bootable operating systems in
boot.ini, be sure you don't delete or corrupt the one that works
properly. That could leave you without a bootable operating system.

My own Win2k boot.ini file shows

[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 with
Boot Logging" /fastdetect /BOOTLOG
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Win2K Pro VGA
Mode" /fastdetect /BOOTLOG /BASEVIDEO
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Win2K Pro
Safe-Mode with Networking" /fastdetect /SAFEBOOT:NETWORK /SOS /BOOTLOG
/NOGUIBOOT
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Win2K Pro
Safe-Mode" /fastdetect /SAFEBOOT:MINIMAL /SOS /BOOTLOG /NOGUIBOOT
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Win2K Pro
Safe-Mode with Command Prompt" /fastdetect
/SAFEBOOT:MINIMAL(ALTERNATESHELL) /SOS /BOOTLOG /NOGUIBOOT

[Note: Each of my lines begins with "multi(0)disk(0)rdi...." These are
long lines and might get broken by the PCBUILD Listserver.]

When you do a clean install of Win2k (onto C:), the default name for
the windows folder is C:\Windows. If you upgraded a previous version
of Windows, the default Windows 2000 folder is called C:\Winnt. If
you upgraded from WinME and have both a C:\Windows and Cc:\Winnt folder,
I suspect that you could delete the C:\Windows folder if you never want
to boot your old WinME again. But I'd first rename it...just in case. If
all okay for a few days (all your programs work properly), then delete
the Windows folder. By the way, the Win XP boot.ini works the same way.

[Note: The multi, disk, rdisk names can be different if you have IDE
type boot devices instead of SCSI drives like I have. Don't mess with
the multi, disk, rdisk part of the operating system lines in your
boot.ini.]

Regards,
Bill

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