.weir Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Ok, my gf has a Dell, it was a mess, so I stuck her Dell cd in to format for her. As I was setting everything up, for some stupid reason, I deleted the 31MB FAT32 partition at the front of the disk (never clueing it that it maybe be important) anyway, now when I boot, I get a screen asking me what operating system I want to boot to. Both options are 'Windows XP Home Edition', the first choice boots to windows, the second says something about <Windows Root>\System32\hal.dll is not there. Either way, I dunno what happened, if there was a boot loader in the FAT32 partition (why the hell would there be?) or something needs to be chnged in the autoexec or whatever it's called. If anyone knows how I could make it just boot straight into the working install of windows I'd a ppreciated it . . . I need to know quick cuz I'm leaving for the weekend and wanted to make a clean ghost image before she has a chance to muck it up again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OPaul Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Edit C:\boot.ini and remove the second windows entry or set the timeout to 0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+allan MVC Posted June 4, 2004 MVC Share Posted June 4, 2004 Edit the boot.ini file and remove the inactive Windows entry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.weir Posted June 4, 2004 Author Share Posted June 4, 2004 Where should the file be?? I always thought boot.ini was in C:\Windows\boot.ini . . . but there was nothing there, and I did a search and no boot.ini showed up anyway either?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
0sit0 Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Start-> Run -> C:\boot.ini :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OPaul Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 It's a hidden file under the c:\, you'll have to to Folder Options-->View--> and uncheck Hide Protected OS files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
.weir Posted June 4, 2004 Author Share Posted June 4, 2004 awesome, worked perfect, thanks for the quick help guys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Japlabot Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Does this 31MB Partition come with all Dells? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Odyssey Posted June 4, 2004 Share Posted June 4, 2004 Does this 31MB Partition come with all Dells? It's on my girlfriend's Dimension 2400, so I assume that's a yes. andRUWeir: Did you have any problems activating Windows once it was installed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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