boot loader wrong

Hi there. I recently was dual booting with windows 7. Then I deleted that partition and now xp still is showing as 'earlier windows', with a timeout of 30sec. Twice I did fixmbr; that did not change. Then I went into 'My Computer' ->Properties-> Startup and Recovery, and I unchecked the 30sec timeout. I even edited 'boot.ini' manually to put 0 as timeout. No results. When I reboot, it still shows 'Earlier version of Windows' and there is still the 30 sec. timeout. Why doesn't it go into xp directly? What am I missing? Thanks in advance for your tips.

 

I had a problem similar to this a while ago. As far as I can remember I had ro reset my MBR.

Now I know I did it with a toll on Hirens but this site will give you an alternative way.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ht/repairmbr.htm

If you don't like either of those, you could do a search for Reset MBR XP

 

Thanks, Jojo. I have been working with the recovery console on this issue with no success. Earlier I found out that the setup disk is not even able to read the disk that XP is on. Weird... Even though it boots into it with no problem. It can't perform a chekdisk, not a bootcfg, not a fixboot. Only fixmbr, and that doesn't do anything. This is a strange situation. I am at a point where I want to reinstall Windows. Anyone?

 

go to start>run>type in msconfig and click ok

go to the boot.ini tab

click on the check all boot paths

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how many partitions are on your disk and what are they??

the os should be disc 0

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are you using your installation cd to get to the Recovery Console??

and if you can perform fixmbr you should be able to perform others, what errors are you getting??

any in Event viewer or any message on screen, please give exact message.

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also do you have sata drives??

if so then you would have to use F6 to install drivers before RC will work

 

Thanks, Elizabeth23. Meanwhile I did reinstall my windows xp system. I know, lots of work, but I like challenges, and I am almost done. No, for some reason, the utilities of the setup disk just did not see the file system of the C:\ drive. When I used a windows 7 setup disk, it told me it had a wrong partition table. Anyway, no utilities helped, it couldn't do any bootrec /rebuild, no fixboot.

 

Okay, at least you will get a fresh start, install an antivirus, MBAE and MBAM, keep updated and run scans often and surf safe