boot up problem

[jacksprat16]

hi
i don't get this? i have xp on one hard drive.i inserted another hard drive to put vista on, i had a few probs with this so took out the hard drive with vista on, reset the boot up to my drive with xp on,
but now when i boot up is has "vista" and "an earlier installation" to choose from,obviously the vista is no longer in the comp but if i choose vista it says a certain file is missing,so now every time i boot up i have to keep my old key board in along side my usb keyboard to access the boot up,
how can it have any reference to vista when the drive it was on is not in the comp,i cant find anything in the bios to cure this i also took out the motherboard battery overnight to see if that would cure it. it didn't.
and help please

[jacksprat16]

the file it say is missing if i click on the"non existent on my comp vista"
is \ windows\system32\winload.exe

[VHG]

It has a reference to vista because the XP "start up" was changed to allow you to chose either XP or Vista when the computer starts up.

The fact you have removed the Vista disk will not alter the "start up" process on the XP disk. It does not know you have removed the Vista disk so still offers it during start up.

You say you need two keyboards during boot up. My guess is the USB one does not work before Windows loads.

You should be able to change this in the BIOS.

Just go into the BIOS and enable the option which says a USB keyboard and mouse CAN work before Windows loads.

[ChuckFickens]

in windows XP right click on my computer, select properties and then click on the advanced tab, then click on the settings button under "startup and recovery" make sure that windows XP is selected as the default operating system and then remove the tick from "time to show list of operating systems"... click OK a few times and you won't get the menu at startup any more.

[VHG]

More info.

It is a while since I worked with this, but I think this "XP or Vista" info is held in a file called "Boot.INI" on the XP disk.

You can edit the boot.ini file yourself to remove the Vista option, but if you dont do it right it may affect your XP start up as well

See here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/289022

[ChuckFickens]

Oh and the reference to vista is in a file called boot.ini on your C drive.

You could edit this to remove any references to vista, but doing what I said above is safer as there is no chance of you mucking the boot.ini file up totally and making your computer totally unbootable.

[ChuckFickens]

Nice bit of cross posting going on here :)

[jacksprat16]

hello you two i did all that but still it shows
i sorted the usb keyboard prob out so i guess ill just have to tell it which system to use
nothing showing in the bootup info but xp
when i installed vista i did it on a another hard drive disconnected my "c" drive while doing this that why i cant figure out why its still showing on boot up choices

[jacksprat16]

ps i also dont have file called boot.ini anywhere on my hard drive search as i may
with the search facility or looking in sys32

[jacksprat16]

and removed the hard drive with vista on

[jacksprat16]

i downloaded this and it sorted it in minutes
"easybcd"
if anyone else has this problem