Troubleshooting

Boot Menu Isn't Displayed

When I start up my PC, I don't get a choice of operating systems. Instead, an operating system boots up directly.

What has happened is that an installation program overwrote the normal XP boot loader. (For example, Linux may have installed the Linux Loader LILO. The MS-DOS sys command can also do this.) To restore the Windows loader, boot your computer from your Windows XP installation CD and follow the instructions to repair a damaged Windows XP installation. The only repair options you need to select at this point are the options to repair the startup environment and the boot sector. Your emergency disk will come in handy as the repair mechanism uses it to find your Windows XP partition.

Removing the Windows XP Boot Loader

I want to remove the Windows XP Boot Loader.

This might be needed if you have incorrectly installed an operating system and want to remove it to start over. The same process of removing the Windows XP boot loader is applicable to the Windows 2000 and NT 4.0 boot loader. If you choose to perform this step, however, you must be sure that you have an operating system to boot into. For this example, assume you have Windows 98/95 installed and want to return to a state in which it is the only operating system available.

First, while you are booted into Windows 98/95, you must create a bootable system disk. This can be accomplished by selecting the Add/Remove Programs control panel. Then select the Startup Disk tab.

After creating a startup disk, reboot your system using the new disk. After you have fully booted into MS-DOS, simply enter the following command from the command prompt:

 sys C: 

This will install the Windows 98 startup boot sector onto drive C: and remove the Windows XP boot loader. Now that you're able to boot back into Windows 9x, simply remove the Windows XP directories.

You can optionally remove the following files to clean up the rest of the Windows XP boot loader files:

 C:\boot.ini C:\ntldr C:\ntdetect.com