Multiple Copies of Windows Installed

[Seanfitz86]

Ok guys, I searched the old forum for an answer to this problem, found a thread but it degenerated into some sort of bickering and there was no resolution of the problem. So here's the question again.

Somehow I managed to get three copies of Windows XP installed on the same PC. The third I understand how, the second I'm not to sure about.

Here's what happens: when the computer is booted up I'm prompted to choose which version of windows I wish to run. It gives me a list of three seemingly identical Windows XP's. I choose the middle one because it is the one with all my information and programs on it. I can however choose any of the other two I wish, but they are fresh windows with nothing in them so I don't use them.

I'd like to know how to delete these other versions of windows from my computer but I'm extremely nervous about doing damage to it, especially losing my information as I have a lot of stuff that is important to me like my writing, homework, and gigs of music. Yes I realize I can make a backup, but the whole idea still makes me gittery.

So I'm wondering if any of you can help me with this problem, or perhaps explain what effects having multiple versions of windows can have. Is it really having any effect other than the annoyance when booting?

[Dusty]

Now tell us if the three versions of XP are on different physical hard drives, on different partitions on the same hard drive, on one partition on the only hard drive.

[Seanfitz86]

How do I find that out...sorry probably a dumb question. They're defiantly all on the same hard drive and I can even access them through my C Drive documents and settings. Not sure which that makes it.

[Dusty]

Okay Sean, your knowledge of your pc appears to be on the lean side so we'll take this slowly.

To find out how many hard drives/partitions you have click on Start>My Computer and just count the number of devices listed under "Hard Disk Drives".

(1) Before going any further we need to know as much as possible about your pc, what brand it is (HP, Dell etc), which model, what hardware is installed (do you have a floppy drive, cdrom?).

(2) Do you have any kind of software toolkit for backup/error recovery such as Erunt, NTFS4Dos or any other recovery tools?   

(3) Do you know how to edit text files using a text editor?

(4) Can you copy/paste.

(5) Do you have a full version original cd of Windows XP?

Having more than one version of Windows installed will probably give no problems whatsoever apart from taking up lots of valuable space on your hard drive and the inconvenience of having to select which OS to boot every time although we can probably get around the latter by simply editing a file.

Your backup should be as up-to-date as you want it to be at all times, your hard drive(s) can fail catastrophically at any time, they are just electro-mechanical devices.   As a precaution you will definitely need to backup your valuable files before commencing to delete the two versions of Windows which you want to be rid of.

Post back with your responses please.

[Seanfitz86]

Believe it or not I'm probably more savy than your average person but in no way up to your speed obviously, I tend to know about things I use on a regular basis, or things I've had to fix in the past.

It was a custom made done through a Canadian company named Compu-smart, they go through a company called "Mind".

It's a AMD Athalon 3400+, 2.4 GHz, 1 Gig of RAM, I have a floppy drive, as well as a DVD drive and DVD Burner. I also use virtual drives for mounting, I'm not sure if that is important. There's only one hard drive, it's 143 Gigs.

I do have a backup program through my Norton 360. I must admit I've been kinda dumb about it because I realize how important it is to back-up, but it gave me some trouble the first time I tried and I never really got around to going at it again.

I'm not sure what you mean by edit text files, if you just mean opening documents and changing text and numbers then yes.

People that can't copy and paste probably wouldn't know how to find this site. :p

Yes I do have a full version of Windows XP, I believe this is what got me into this problem, or at least the third instance of windows xp. It was after a major issue on my computer, I tried to uninstall windows and re-install it, but apparently I did it incorrectly because the old one was never un-installed.

I figured it wasn't a big deal but I'm trying to keep my computer at peak performance, and keep things clean so it was worrying me.

Thanks for what ever help you can give me.

[kevin_dong]

Hi sean , i think you just need to change system startup time on the your computer.you have click on start-->settings-->control panel-->system-->advanced-->settings-->.......choose the middle one and reset both display list and display recovery for 0 seconds.

[Dusty]

Hi again Sean.   Apologies, I didn't mean to be at all critical of your knowledge level, mine isn't all that high and we may be into the blind leading the blind.

It is important that you ensure your backup is up-to-date.

Meantime please copy/paste your BOOT.INI file into a response and show what Windows folders are in your root, there probably are three of them, please post the folder names which should be something like Windows, Windows.000 and Windows.001.

As you will appreciate I'm just gathering info, what advice I come up with depends on what the info shows.

If anyone else would like to jump in with advice please do so.

Thanks