help needed

hello

i recently reformated a laptop the person wanted xp on so thats what i did all works fine but there is one nigglin problem when it starts it stays on a black dos screen with the option of startin 3 different windows xp versions its as if i have somehow partitioned it i have deleted the ones i dont want but still have to press enter to get windows started any ideas on how to get it sorted without formatin if poss

jo

When I had a similiar problem the only way I could get around it was reformatting it and starting the whole damn thing off again. As it turned out the first time it did not go in properly, which was due to a partition protector installed, which I had forgot about.

I tried this was given this as help, but it din't work for me ad mine windows was incomplete.

Right click My Computer / Properties / Advanced System Settings. Under Startup and Recovery click Settings and untick Time to display Operating Systems: make sure the right one is selected at the top.

You could try running the repair function from the XP cd; it sounds like it could just be the MBR.

MBR .tUrnip? Can you elaborate on that for me plz?

Jo will be back on here soon T, so can you let us know what MBR is......or am I just being blonde?

i had this with my laptop when i did a install you have to do a clean install cos i bet if you look at your hard drive info it will show its used loads just for windows it hasnt deleted the partition use the xp disk and do a complete reformat of c: then it should ask you if you want to add a partition in then you know it has done it right

Oh right... MBR stands for Master Boot Record.
It's the bit that runs after the BIOS and before the operating system. In fact, it's used to load the operating system - bootstrapping.

Cheers guys I'm sure she'll understand all that lot, if not she'll ask more.....

thanks everyone :-) will have a look at it
:-)