Removing Dual Boot

[ThinkPad560X]

I got a SSD drive and connected it to my desktop to install Windows 7 on it. When I removed the SDD. My other HDD "1TB" Windows XP. Now boots to a screen that says select prevoius Windows or Windows 7. I just used the desktop to install Windows 7 onto a Drive for another PC. How do I remove the dual boot? Not sure if this why my Windows XP 1TB Drive boots really slow. sometimes it takes 1 hour to just boot the welcome screen.

[Temetka]

http://www.ehow.com/how_6435843_change- ... order.html

You could also boot to DOS and do a fdisk /mbr.

Or right click on My Computer, select Advanced tab, then near the bottom should be a startup and recovery button. Click that, remove the offending line that points to Windows 7. I would make a backup of your boot.ini file before making any sweeping changes.

System restore could do it also.

With multi-drive Windows 7 installs I always removed all the extra hard drives, then install Windows 7, then re-connect any extra drives.

Out of curiosity does your SSD boot into Windows 7 on another machine just fine? Sometimes it places the boot files on the primary drive, then Windows 7 on the secondary and points the primary to the secondary. Confusing? Yep. Why Microsoft did this, I do not know.

[ThinkPad560X]

This is what it says under notepad

[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" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT

[Temetka]

That's only a 30 second timeout. It will have ZERO effect on taking an hour to hit the login screen. My gut tells me your HD has some issues. You can remove the timeout line and it should boot straight up.

You can do basic troubleshooting like removing all drives (including DVD) and just having 1 HD installed. Then see how it boots. Also make sure your SATA settings (assuming it's a SATA HD) are properly configured in the BIOS.

Your first post was kinda hard to understand.

So you have this desktop with XP installed.
You then installed an SSD as a secondary drive and installed Windows 7 on the SSD.
You removed the SSD.
XP now gives you a boot menu, and it can take an hour to boot.

So your new bootup is this (as it stands right now).

Power on.
Get to boot menu
Select XP
Wait for it to load

Am I right on your order of operations so far?

[ThinkPad560X]

Yea.

[Temetka]

If you are still having issues try this:


Create a bootable floppy or USB stick with XP's DOS on it.

fdisk /mbr
sys c:\

You should be able to reboot. Your menu may or may not be there (considering it lives in the boot.ini file).

But I bet it will take less than an hour to boot.

But that long boot time does concern me. See if your HD manufacturer has tools CD or something you can download and run a HD integrity scan from. I wonder if you have a corrupted MFT or something, or god forbid, bad sectors.