[magicalchild]

i tried installing XP on my laptop, but the installation disk was old and defective and kept hanging. So i got a new Vista setup and installed that. Now, everytime my system boots, one of the choices in windows boot manager is "XP Setup". And it's always the default, so i always have to be there to change the choice to Windows Vista. I tried using VistaBootPRO to remove this "XP Setup" choice, but it doesn't appear among the choices in the registry! So i can't delete it!

What to do?

[Grav!ty]

Hi magicalchild. You can delete the boot menu entry using the Manage OS Entries page of VistaBootPRO and then search for and delete any temporary setup files and folders with strange looking file names.

Post the strange file names if you are uncertain what they are and we can help you decide if they are the right ones to delete. You'll need to set folder options not to hide protected operating system files and to show hidden files and folders to see them.

[magicalchild]

hi gravity! thanks so much for replying. my problem is when i look at the Manage OS Entries page of VistaBootPro, only MS Windows Vista appears. No "XP Setup." hay. maybe i should just look for those temporary files you're talking about. in what folder can i find them?

[JabbaPapa]

You may need to manually edit the BCD store to get rid of your phantom XP, unless one of the VBP experts here has a better idea ?

[markcynt]

An easy workaround until this gets sorted may be to go into Startup and Recovery and change the default operating system to Vista and the "Time to display list of operating systems" to zero.

To get there go to Control Panel>System>Advanced System Settings, then click settings under "Startup and Recovery".

Mark

[JabbaPapa]

An easy workaround until this gets sorted may be to go into Startup and Recovery and change the default operating system to Vista and the "Time to display list of operating systems" to zero.

To get there go to Control Panel>System>Advanced System Settings, then click settings under "Startup and Recovery".

Given the nature of the member's problem, that sounds dangerous as it might ruin the computer's ability to boot at all !!

Please do this slowly and carefully, and no-one's computer need get hurt...

[markcynt]

How is that? Given the nature of the problem it seems very safe to me.

Mark

[JabbaPapa]

How is that? Given the nature of the problem it seems very safe to me.

Mark

Because the computer might still end up trying to boot to the non-existent XP, with a boot delay time of zero -- leaving it unbootable.

VBP seems to be having some trouble reading the member's BCD store, and I think that manually editing the BCD store using the command line interface may be the right solution.

But the resident VBP experts may have a less intrusive solution.

Nevertheless, in cases where there are boot problems, it is ALWAYS very dangerous to define a boot delay time of zero

[markcynt]

Good answer. I don't see how that would happen but I guess stranger things have happened. He could always leave the timeout unchanged and just change the default boot to Vista to test it. Of course the phantom XP may not even be listed in the operating system list in Startup and Recovery.

Mark