Page 1 of Irritating dual boot screen... how can i get rid!

:B Well in a fit of madness i decided to build myself a new comp, all went spiffingly well, os installed, (vista ultimate) and was using it for a few days when i thought it would be a good idea to transfer some data (itunes library, word docs etc etc) from the old drive that had xp pro on it.

now my basic knowledge of pcs tells me that making the old drive a slave will just allow me to drag and drop files from one to the other, however, this board has sata2 drive plugs and as far as i can see the bios sorts that all out for you by giving you a boot option screen which it did, all so well and good, loaded Vista from the boot screen, got all the data transfered from the old XP drive etc and then having no need for the extra drive, shut down, unplugged the old hd and rebooted, went into bios settings to make sure all was well and set the remaining hd as the first boot device, then dvd as second, then went to the boot list option and put the hd at the top of the list (old drive wasnt even listed) saved, backed out and saved bios settings..

What should be happening is i should now just boot straight into Vista right? with no boot option screen? - nope i still get the option screen even though the only drive showing is the new one... ive reset the bios, shorted out the pins, taken the batt out etc etc - but still i get the boot option screen.... i just want rid of the damn screen!

Sorry for long post but wanted to put it all i`d done up to now in the hope one of the I.T guru`s can point me in the right direction, have googled till im all googled out!

Mobo is a gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3/S3 AMD AM2 dual bios jobby...

Any pointers would be appreciated lads ....

:B

Take a look at this page:
neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

Used to be easy in XP just to edit the boot.ini file...no longer with Vista! :D

I`ve only used it once, but it was easy enough to use IIRC.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

if you have a proper install disk for the OS, boot with that in, go into recovery console, then fixmbr, at least that works in 2k and xp, they may have changed in vista.

failing that try something like hiren`s boot disc, Ultimate boot sic, or supergrub disc to fix you master boot record and make things "normal"

how about start -> run -> msconfig?

can`t you do it in start - settings - control panel - system, one of those tabs has boot order etc, set the time to 0

:B Yeah it is a legit copy lol - i did have a peak in msconfig but didnt see anything out of the ordinary to be honest, it does seem to be a screen generated by the bios tho, unless Vista controls that as well, will try the above and report back, thx for the quick replies! :B

Need to be careful with Vista Al.

The boot settings are now all stored in some kind of DB that the BCDEdit.exe binary can only change. The link I posted above is basically a GUI for BCDEdit.

Like I said before, in previous incarnations Windows was (is!) so easy to modify stuff like that (msconfig etc.)...no idea why they had to complicate things.

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

i see, I`ve only played with Vista briefly, it ran like a dog on my laptop so i got rid of it.

I guess they`ve mare the changes to stop ppl making changes by accident, or letting any Tom Dick or harry who isn`t sure what they were doing break it. Much like you use to be able to change the startup image easily, you just had to rename the bmp you wanted it to display and put it in the windows directory, then you had to do all sorts of things. nearly broke some-ones pc at work trying to play a prank, that backfired when pc wouldn`t boot at all, luckily had kept old files on there renamed, so had to whip out their hard drive put it in my pc as a slave to rename the files back.

:B Its totally weird, had a look at some of the settings above and set the timeout to 0 but that didnt do anything i can tell, but im thinking the screen is popping up during post, so Vista hasnt even started to load as such, i dont get why if there is just the one hd, one partition and the bios is configured to boot from hd and also in the boot sequence as primary boot it wont play ball, maybe i need a way to completey reset the bios(s)? just shorting the pins just seems to reset the clock etc, is the other one holding that info? its storing a piece of info somewhere that wont clear for some reason and god its so annoying!! wud flashing the bios with the same file be of any benefit? (there are no new updates so would just be the one installed at the mo) :B

OK, so its the motherboard boot selection menu that you`re seeing??
Where you see the DVD drive, Hard disk 1, Hard disk 2 etc. etc.?

(I didn`t read the original post properly, sorry!)

Looking at the manual (www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Manual_DownloadFile.aspx?FileType=Manual&FileID=18308) it doesn`t give an indication that there are any settings to force the boot menu to appear each time.
So I`m not sure!

"Build a man a fire, and he`ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he`ll be warm for the rest of his life."
-Terry Pratchett.

This item was edited on Monday, 24th November 2008, 22:07

what happens if you boot a cd in you can boot off, i.e. your Vista disc, or have you got a Linux disc like Ubuntu or something you can boot off.

I`m thinking if you set your boot order to cd first then hd, and it can boot a startup disc without doing the boot menu it "must" be in the os rather than bios.

i think it sounds like the MBR (mast boot record) is screwed. So whatever the Vista equivalent of fixmbr is that should fix it. I`m sure if you download Super grub disc ( don`t let the fact it`s based on Linux, and primarily for Linux users put you off, it easily fixes Windows boot records)

edit:
googling fixmbr and vista, I found a few links to the one Miles suggested earlier, looks like what you need.

or the MS way

This item was edited on Monday, 24th November 2008, 22:45

:B @ milesr - i assume its a mobo generated screen, the post screen stops at memory check and then up comes the choices...delete key - enter bios, f12 - choose boot option etc etc - i can just press the esc key and off it goes into vista as normal, and as you say the manual doesnt help much, but when you go into the bios you do get boot option settings ie cd, hd, floppy or whatever order you want it to boot from, then there is an option that specifies boot sequence, this you choose by moving the item up and down the list till the hd is at the top, all this i have done and i still get the damn page come up, i assume whatever box it was that was ticked was forced when i put in the other drive (which had xp pro on) temporarily when i transfered the data over - seeing two os`s it required choosing what to boot from, which makes sense, why its still there makes no sense as i only have one drive and one partition on it - vista..

@ admars - i did try and load the vista disc it loads up to the point of almost getting into the setup options screen and halts, mouse still moves but hangs... so i dont know whats going on there... see your point about os as opposed to bios, its just strange its a gigabyte page it loads - i did also d/load the boot menu prog someone suggested to fix the mbr it looks pretty simple to do - would it help if i cut and paste what the current mbr boot file is? it did look pretty normal to me, but im no expert, no signs of extra os`s in the list etc, its just so damn irritating lol

p.s i did fire off an email to gigagbyte tech and gave a complete breakdown of what happens etc... i got a reply back this morning... please remove battery from motherboard to reset bios, please do not hesitate to contact us if this did not work...... :/ like i never tried that option about 5 times already lol

I really appreciate all the time and suggestions you guys are giving, im pretty sure it can be cracked, just didnt fancy doing the whole re install thing and it still being there if you know what i mean! :B i will look at the links in full today and give them a shot and post back when i have... thanks again.

P.S this is the current boot settings i got from easybcd..

There is one entry in the Vista Bootloader.
Bootloader Timeout: 0seconds.
Default OS: Microsoft Windows Vista

Entry #1
Name: Microsoft Windows Vista
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Windows Directory: \Windows

seems ok??

This item was edited on Tuesday, 25th November 2008, 10:44