Recently I was replacing Windows MI with Windows XP on my dad?s old 2000 Vaio laptop. Right now when starting the laptop it asks which windows I want to use as an operating system. The laptop has no original boot CD no more. I know it?s time for a new laptop but I was just wondering how do I get rid of one of the windows? Thanx
Sounds like you either created a new partition during the xp installation and installed windows on that in which case you have 2 valid operating systems installed, OR you installed xp over your MI (ME?) installation and it's not valid anymore but it still appears in the boot.ini file created by the xp installation so it appears as an option to start when you turn your pc on.
One thing to do is try to see if you can boot to both or only one of those installations, do you know? I assume you can boot to the xp since you made no mention of a problem with that, so try to other one, don't worry the worst that can happen is that you'll need a restart (if it asks you anything that you don't understand just hold down the power button on the laptop and it will shut down).
If you only want to boot to the new xp installation, once you are in that, right click on my computer and go the the advanced tab and then under startup and recovery click the settings button, make sure the default operating system is set to windows xp, then uncheck the box underneath that "time to display list of operating systems". Now it won't ask which operating system you want to log in to at startup, if you want that option back later for some reason just put a tick back in that box.
If you find out that you did create another partition that you isntalled xp to and you want the old space that the other partition took up just look in my computer and you should see the partition (drive letter, hard drive icon) of the previous windows installation, just format it to clear the data (right click, format) and then it's available. If you just have one drive (c:) then you probably installed xp over the old version in which case it should be ok and you should have all of your hard drive available for use.
