XP Home & Pro on same machine

[kiwi2000a]

I am trying to uninstall one version of Windows XP from a Toshiba Laptop. The owner already had XP Home installed and thought she was installing Office. Instead she installed XP Pro. The installation process never finished. During boot up the default is Pro which does not fully start up, due to the incomplete installation. She has the option to use the arrow key to select Home version during the first few seconds of boot up. She wants to uninstall Pro and continue with Home version. I tried putting the Pro CD back in and looking for an uninstall option, but none is available.

She only has one drive and one boot.ini on the C drive. Here is the text
that is in the boot.ini file:

[Boot Loader]
Timeout=5
Default=C:\$Win_NT$.~BT\Bootsect.dat
[Operating Systems]
Multi(0)Disk(0)rDisk(0)Partition(1)\Windows="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition"/Fast Detect
C:\$Win_NT$.~BT\Bootsect.dat="MicrosoftWindowsXP Professional Setup"

What part of this should I delete (I will make a backup before deleting the
line)? My thought is that it is the entire last line. There is no other
boot.ini file.

Do I rewrite the boot.ini file to read:

[Boot Loader]
Timeout=5
Default=Multi(0)Disk(0)rDisk(0)Partition(1)\Window s

If not what should the text read as? I'm new to this and am trying to help a friend out. This stuff is uncharted
territory for me.

Thanks - Kiwi2000a

[bigH2O]

You're close on what the boot.ini should look like.

[Boot Loader]
Timeout=5
Default=Multi(0)Disk(0)rDisk(0)Partition(1)\Window s
[Operating Systems]
Multi(0)Disk(0)rDisk(0)Partition(1)\Windows="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition"/Fast Detect

From reading the existing boot.ini, the new install of XP Pro is in limbo right now and is going to need to be either removed by hand, or left alone. It is taking up hard drive space that she may need to recover. Unless you're 100% certain what you are doing don't try removing it by hand. If she needs the hard drive space back, she should probably let somebody mess with it who really understands the nuts and bolts of the installation process.

edit: I don't know why the board is throwing extra spaces in the lines when posting, but in the Default line there should not be a space between Window and s, and there should not be a space between Micro and soft two lines below that.

[BrainGarbage]

Removing the XP pro upgrade could run into problems and cause the copy of home not to boot, if you are just annoyed by the boot options when loading bring up your system properties screen by right clicking the My computer icon, on the desktop or in the start menu, select properties from the context menu then click the advanced tab, click the startup and recovery options and adjust the settings to just load the copy of Home, and reduce the time to 0 and it should just boot straight to home from now on.

[bigH2O]

Removing the option from the boot.ini will have absolutely no effect on the functionality or "bootability" of the system. Attempting to remove the failed install may affect it... that is why I suggested having somebody who knows what they are doing handle it.

[mikmik]

Are there restore points in XP home? I think that would work fine. i am not sure about the booot.ini file, i doubt it gets touched so no matter what, you should delete the second boot option (XP Pro). That boot.ini shows xp setup in the WinNT folder, so I thing System32 should be fine.

These are just suggestions, I am not very familiar with XP Home for some reason. All other windows install and fix, though:)

[bigH2O]

According to the readout from the boot.ini that he posted, the home setup should not have been affected at all. The status of the pro install is at the point just after copying all of the files to a temporary folder, but prior to "upgrading" or overwriting any of the home files. Now it's just a matter of cleaning up the boot.ini and the fubared install of pro.