Posted 13 January 2009 - 07:02 PM
OK, something major happened to my laptop hard drive. I don't know how to fix it and I didn't want to format because I have pictures and original music that hasn't been backed up. So I figured if I bought a new hard drive and installed windows there I could later put the old one in an enclosure and usb it and try to retrieve the old files.
So far so good.... kinda
I bought a 250GB hard drive which is more space than I need or have ever had but that's all that was available. I got a nice copy of xp, it presented me with the option of creating a partition and I thought maybe I can prevent this from happening again I could partition the hard drive and install windows on the small section and save data on the larger. It all went smoothly and windows installed. Then I realized that it wasn't recognizing the larger partition, it needed to be formatted, so I put the windows cd back in and tried to format the larger section. I thought it was going to let me format then exit the installation but it didn't. It tried to install windows again on the larger partition. So I ejected the cd and rebooted, now it thinks there are 2 windows installations on the computer and when I try to start up in one of the black screens it gives me the option of which to run. If I choose the 2nd one it works, if I use the first it errors and reboots again. How can I remove all traces of the 2nd installation? I erased the folders that had been created on the 2nd partition but it still remains as an option when I start up. If I go to my computer, I see the C: drive, which has windows on it, the D; drive which is the DVD ROM drive and the E; drive which is completely empty. How do i get rid of the start up screen that asks which install I would like to run?
Thank You