How do I get rid of my 1st Windows Installation?

Ok, so I installed windows on a hard drive that had some stuff on it already, on a different partition. But then I realized that it installed Windows and named that drive E: rather than C: and the stuff that was originally on it was C:.

So I installed Windows on the C: drive and then formatted the E: drive, deleting the 1st windows installation. But now, when I'm starting up my computer, it asks me which OS I want to start up, "Windows XP Professional" or "Windows XP Professional." Yes, they're named the exact same thing.

So I'm wondering, how do I stop it from asking me that? Because I know that I don't have windows installed twice, anymore...

The easy way would be to totally reformat the hard drive and then install XP again. You could use the Data Lifeguard disk that came with your WD drive to write zeros to it and then install XP. Or you could boot to the XP disk and then select to delete all partitions, create a new one (any size you want) and format it using the NTFS Full option. When XP is installed you can use Disk Management to create additional partitions if needed.

You'll need to manually edit the Boot.ini file...when you have the option of booting to an "Unidentified OS", or any other OS/multiple instances of the same OS (in the boot menu) and you want to remove one or more of them...

Under "System Properties" | "Advanced" tab | "Startup and Recovery" (Settings button) | "Edit" button...the Boot.ini looks like this when XP is the only available boot option, and located on the first Primary volume...

[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 (or Professional) Edition" /fastdetect

This is a sample of the above Boot.ini file after adding another partition running W2K Pro...

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) | WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1) | WINDOWS="Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2) | WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

I used the "Pipe"(|) character in the "boot loader" menus above instead of the "slash"(\) character so they would be properly formatted.

Thanks a bunch redduc900. That was some awesome info!