XP Mixed Up - 2 Copies on System

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Resposted without the competitor reference - Apologies for that.

History of Events.

Took delivery of a new system last week with XP and all drivers etc, pre-installed. Over the last few days I have been adding my own hardware, monitor, wireless keyboard & mouse, router and all my software one at a time, checking and testing there were no problems before installing anything else.

Last thing I worked on was using the Tranfer Wizard to set up my Outlook Express accounts, address book etc. I had some problems with this with messages stating that the Transfer Wizard was different versions etc. even although my old computer also has XP fully updated. I eventually had to use the XP CD on both computers to transfer the documents. Although I had only chosen OE settings and nothing else I noticed that it also included some files and changed my wallpaper to match my old computer. At the end of it all it did not work and Outlook Express flagged up various errors when I tried to run it so I shut down and went to bed.

When I booted up this morning Windows "hung" at the "Starting Windows" screen. After several attempts including a cold boot I decided to try, maybe stupidly, booting from the XP OEM CD that came with the system. I thought this may have offered some options however it immediately started to reinstall XP. I left it to run as I know that Windows used to install on top of itself without losing any settings or programmes. When it was complete and rebooted I was offered a choice of 2 operating systems during boot up and chose the first one. XP opened as naked as the day it was born. I was convinced it had done a reformat and clean install until I found my original copy of Windows and My Documents etc. had been moved to the D: drive beside my storage and downloaded files.

I shut down and rebooted this time choosing the second option for operating system and found I was back to my original set up with all of my programmes and desk top intact. When it opened I was offered a system restore and I restored back to a point earlier in the day. Now all is working again and I have done a manual transfer of the OE settings, however I now have the following problems.

Questions

How can I get rid of this bare copy of XP now occupying my C: drive?

When this has gone will this remove the choice of operating systems during start up and go straight to XP?

How do I then get my set up copy of XP, My Docs etc. back to the C: drive where it belongs, leaving my D: drive free for downloading and general storage?

Any assistance in sorting this mess would be most appreciated.

Axel
 
UKDTweak said:
Search your drive for a file called boot.ini, you can edit this to remove the new xp install line and thus your original windows will boot automatically and you can manually delete the new install files.

How on earth you got the original install 'moved' to the d drive i dont know, this is not something XP has ever done before when ive used it, normally it will install on the c drive as your new install did, but in a folder called windows01 or something to that effect ???

You sure the new install is not the one on the d drive ?

I will take a look at Boot.ini but not sure how I will know which line to remove if they are both called "Windows XP" I assume it is the first line as I have to select the second line during boot up to get my original version installed.

Yes this is extremely weird. I definitly have a copy on both drives so I will take another look tonight.

Axel
 
Further investigation now that the dust has settled:

I was totally wrong and confused, the new copy of XP has in fact been installed on my D: drive. My original copy is still on the C: drive and working fine.

I have looked at boot.ini from msconfig and there are 2 entries under operating system both identical except that the first one says partition(2) and the second one says partition(3).

How do I know which one is the default? The first one on the booting up screen is the default and takes me to the new copy of XP if I do not change it, but this is may not be the first one on the boot.ini file? The msconfig boot path just tells me that all is well and does not give me the actual path.

Axel
 
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