Two operating programmes on one computer

[TracyJ]

I have had to format my hard drive twice in the past year. The first time, no problem. This last time my husband did it and we appear to have two lots of XP on there - one which works fine and another that doesn't, but is taking up a lot of space and making the running of the computer very slow. How do I get rid of this other version? It appears on the start up black and white screen, where I need to highlight which XP I want to run.

[j2buttonsw]

Edit the hidden file called boot.ini which is at the root of C: using notepad. Remove the reference to the superfluous second Windows XP install. Then delete the folders it refers to eg if C:\windows is bad but C:\windows.000 is good, delete C:\windows.

[LKHNET]

When your husband installed XP for the second time, he chose to install it alongside the following older install. I think the simplest way would be to completely format the harddrive, wiping everything off and then install XP once again. Remember, make sure you have backed up all the documents and files that you want to keep, and make sure you have all the drivers etc for the devides you have.