Reformatted pc now with 2 installations on it

I reformatted my old pc but for some reason its showing 2 installations - the new one Xp home and the old one xp prof .
I gave it to my neice and it was only she turned it on yesterday that she went onto the xp pro ( obviously my previous settings) and saw my screensaver - a snake and asked me how she got rid of it. So i went round today to look at the pc and only then realise that on start up it asks you which version you want. Told her to use the XP home.

But how do i delete the other version.

When i reformatted i wasnt completely understanding what i was doing as it would not boot from disk so put disk in and ran it from there - does this mean that i have 2 partitions on the pc? or 2 complete systems. I didnt have time to check on the size of the hard drive, but my old pc had 2 80gb HD's
I do remember it telling me that the version i was trying to add was older than the professional version - but as i wanted to re formatt it with xp home and i didnt have the professional version to use. It has been sitting in my garage for afew months not used until yesterday. I just reformatted and left it.
Sorry if this sounds long winded.
Or will i have to do a complete reformatt again if so how do i set the bios ???? to reboot from cd as i think thats where i went wrong to begin with
cheers
Linny

i will probably have to print off any response to take it round to hers to do it

Yes we are both blondes

it doesnt necessarily mean you have two partitions but you do have different os installed and more than likely what you have on one os can be shared on the other.

To permanently remove one you would have to boot from os disk and format the hard drive completely and reinstall but to just run the one os from startup it can be done in one swift step.

click on start, type msconfig and press enter. a window will appear and in this window click on a tab that says "boot".

You will see the list of Os's that startup on your system
Simply click on the one you want to delete and select delete from within the window or select which os you want to set as the default.

Apply and restart.

thanks Axxxo i will look at that later today when i go round thankfully its only my neice that has this pc. Does it mean that with 2 Os's that it will take up room and make the system run slower

It probably wont make the system run slower. You have mentioned that the computer contains 2 80GB harddrive's, unless i am wrong i would predict that both OS's are installed seperatly on each drive, in this case it wont affect the other OS. I have a friend with the similar set up, he has several hard drives all with an OS on each and is given an option to boot from any of them at boot, providing the removable storage is connected before the PC is turned on. It will certainly take memory but it shouldnt make your system run slow, XP is pretty decent with speed as it is.

thanks Dan both hard drives are internal ( C & F drives) i will take a look on the properties to see how much HD space there is on each. I think the pc is going to be used mainly for internet rather than letter and storage etc, they have a laptop so this is just a bonus as its my old pc

ah right, they could use the second drive as a back-up if you are going to wipe it clean, always a good idea to have a back-up of almost everything.

ok im at the pc now tried the above butwhen you start pc up both still come up cant seem to find a button to delete but have clicked default for xp home but still comes up with both when you turn it on

Click on the button that says 'Check all boot paths' and you will get the option to delete the one you don't want.

nope! just says it appears that boot.ini works ok ( or similar ) nothing about delete

Do you see 2 boot paths in that dialog box (Boot.INI)? Have you tried clicking on Check Boot paths on each one? You could also make sure you have chosen the correct one you want to use as the default then change the timeout to 1 second. This way you will only see that screen with multiple OS choices for 1 second and it's gone. Rather than the 30secs default.