Hi (great site)...My problem:>I tried to do a clean Win XP pro install boot from CD, the first stage worked however on the first re-boot, before it even goes to the xp screen it came up with an error that a dll file is missing in ..../../system32. So rather than stuffing around I started another clean install from floppy using the six xp install disks, I selected the...... format fat32 (quick) option thinking it would delete the old install. The install worked perfect! However when I reboot it now comes up with a boot option...it gives me 2 XP boot options! the second being the failed xp. I used Part magic 7 and checked the hard drive, there now is an extended logical partition (2gig) which I can't remove! does anyone know how to remove this? I can't even format it? CONFUSED!!!! NOTE I don't want to reformat the whole hard disk as I have other partitions (ie) win 98 plus another extended partition (all are fat32). can anyone help mwe regain the 2 gig, have tried Part magic 7 but delet option is not available??!!

Hi, I'm not sure if this will work but you can try anyway. We don't take any responsiblility for anything that bad that happens. Ok.. Click Start-> Run. Type in type 'C:windowssystem32diskmgmt.msc' and click ok. Now right click on the partition that you want to delete and click delete from the pop up menu. Hopefully the delete option is available. Now restart your computer and see what happens. If the boot OS Menu comes up goto Start->Run and type in 'C:boot.ini' This is the file that the Boot OS Menu uses. Type This in: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect Make a backup of the boot.ini file incase. Now restart your computer and the boot menu should be gone. I hope that this helps. Donal

I just had a similar problem needing to change the drive assignment letters which it wouldn't let me because it was a "system" drive. In the end, I booted from my NT install disk, removed the partition from that as it didn't care about destroying the XP OS. I had to do another stage after that, involving booting into 98 but you should be able to avoid that. Let me know if anyone finds a better way round this - I'm sure I must be missing something.

When you install WinXP without removing the previous installation, setup will create a map called Windows.0 and add this link to the boot.ini files. As soon as Windows detects 2 entries in boot.ini it will present the boot menu. To prevent this, just edit the boot.ini to remove from the [operating section] the link to .Windows, and leave the Windows.0 reference. Also you can remove the Windows map since it is no longer used.

Also what you could do: first remove the string from the boot.ini file (the failed one) then using partition magic do merge on the extended and primary partion. I've got the same problem before when I was upgrading my buddies pc from 98. It worked for me.

And if all else fails, you can download Delpart.exe from the site www.ntfaq.com/download/delpart.exe. That's a utility that will delete any partition.