Member Avatar for sipapu

When I boot up I get a choice of starting with hard drive C or D. At one time I had my operating system on hard drive D but now it is on hard drive C and have deleted the OS from drive D. I understand there is a file in the registry that I can delete and thus get rid of the extra screen showing the two choices at startup. Would you know what that file is so that I might use "find" in regedit to get rid of it?

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Dani AI

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A short expert addendum to what already pointed out: the startup choice is driven by the boot configuration on the system (active) partition rather than the registry, so removing the old OS folder won’t remove its entry by itself. The safest approach is to back up the boot configuration, edit the unused entry out, and keep a recovery plan in case the machine won’t boot.

Before you change anything

  • Make a copy of the boot configuration file (it lives in the root of the active/system partition and is normally hidden/system). Enable showing hidden and protected files or copy it from a command prompt so you have an untouched backup.
  • Create a simple disk image or at least a file backup if possible — that avoids stress if something goes wrong.

How to tidy the menu safely

  • Edit the boot configuration file with a plain text editor (run the editor with administrator rights), remove the stanza/line that references the old installation, save, then reboot to confirm the remaining entry boots.
  • If you prefer not to remove the entry, you can change the boot timeout so the menu is skipped.

If the system won’t boot after editing

  • Restore the backup copy of the boot configuration file. If that isn’t possible, use the Windows installation/repair environment: for XP/2000 the Recovery Console utilities (for example, fixmbr and fixboot) can repair boot problems; newer Windows versions use the BCD store and require the appropriate startup repair tools or a tool like EasyBCD to edit entries.

Final checks

  • Verify in Disk Management which partition is marked System/Active — the boot files must be on the correct partition before you remove entries. If unsure, stop and get a full image or assistance rather than risking an unbootable system.

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Member Avatar for fry

it's not in registry, it's in boot.ini file. run "msconfig" -> find tab boot.ini and then adjust it.

Member Avatar for sipapu

Thanks a heap. Your help solved both problems. Thanks again.

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