HELP i have 2 windows operating systems showing up

From Dell FAQ

I've formatted and upon boot there is now two Windows options showing, what do I do?

This is actually quite common, and first thing is first I want to assure you that the original install that you formatted is actually gone, that partition is erased and there is no reason to start over with another format yet again. This happens as a result of a 'leftover' sometimes present in the boot.ini file of windows after a fresh install. You will find that if you try and select both, one will actually load your new windows and the other will present an error (becuase it is a leftover that leads to nothing). Therefore it is safe to remove this leftover reference so that it no longer appears at boot and you load straight into Windows.

To do this we have to edit the boot.ini file. First thing is first, boot up the laptop and find out which reference works and which doesn't, usually the bottom one is false. With this information we now get into it. Once on the Windows desktop:

(i) Right click on My Computer on the desktop and select Properties;
(ii) Go to the Advanced tab and click Settings under the 'Startup and Recovery' box;
(iii) Click the Edit button seen in the 'System startup' box, you will be presented with a notepad entry such as the following


Quote:
[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 Home Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition" /fastdetect



Note that it may vary from this slightly, depending upon what two OS you had installed, etc.
(iv) Delete the entire line of the appropriate OS you want to remove from the boot list. For example above I have bolded the second whole entry as false above, when the bottom selection was false. Delete the top line if the opposite is true;
(v) You are done, Save the changes and exit all of this. Upon next boot you will go straight into your new Windows install, enjoy!

thanx mate

that helped alot