Hello , my computer totally crashed several weeks ago...got it basically under control , but in my initial panick I changed something in the bios ? It starts with two options on a black screen...windows xp and windows xp set up...and if I dont catch it in time it goes to blue screen with bla bla cdrom something....I hope and Im sure someone here knows what I ( stupidly ) did. I loaned my laptop the other day and forgot about this and got a freaked out call from my friend that my laptop was broken etc....hope someone can help...thanks
That sounds like the Windows XP boot loader screen. Go to control panel and click system, then go to the advanced tab and click settings at the bottom for Startup and Recovery. Select "Windows XP" for the default and uncheck the box for "Time to display list of operating systems". That should load Windows XP the normal way without the prompt to select. You still have another issue though. The "Windows XP setup" entry suggests that a second install of Windows XP was started but not completed. I'm not sure what to do about that?
Hello , your right...there is another issue. W O W thats what happend and that explains why all my files etc are (hidden ?) they seem to be there but I have to search for things in cdrive , but cant get them...because (again in my panick) i ran a xp installation disk ???? and then redid my desktop etc...and thats when I realized my old files , set up etc were still there ? %^$$@# hope this isnt a huge problem...thank you
Hi , went where you said , and my only two options are windows xp set up and windows xp fast detct (setup ) so is this part of the bigger problem....darn darn darn...
The windows xp fastdetct option might be the normal option. It's been a while since I used XP so I'm not sure.
The actual Boot.ini entry will be something like this
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
I'd set the "windows xp fastdetect" as the default then just set the delay to 5 seconds or something when you test it. If it boots up OK then just remove the checkmark so there is no delay. Set explorer to show hidden and system files and then look for a duplicate Windows folder. It will be labeled Windows1 or Windows001 or something similar. If you see a second Windows folder that's a sure sign of a second install to the same partition. If it was me I'd just start over. Backup what you want saved to external media first. Then start the install, delete the partition Windows is installed on and then create a new blank partition to install too. That should put everything back to normal.