Ask Dave Taylor: Tech and Business

Monday

I don't want my PC asking what version of Windows I want

I had Windows XP home edition on my computer and then I installed XP Professional. I thought it would format the hard drive and erase XP Home edition, but now when I start the computer, it always ask which one to choose, home edition or professional. How can I tell it to always choose professional?

There are two possibilities here - one, you actually have two Windows installations, or two, your boot menu just thinks there are. Microsoft writes about this situation in Knowledge Bulletin #Q289022, but hopefully my answer will get you going faster anyway.

If you select the XP Home boot menu option, and it either boots into XP Pro, or doesn't boot at all, you're correct in that you only have one Windows installation. If you select the XP Home option and you can boot into your old XP Home installation, then you either have two
Windows installations on one partition, or somehow ended up with two partitions each with a Windows installation.

If they have both Windows installations, I would strongly recommend...