General Question - What have I done now?

Ok, I am a game but limited knowledge computer person. I have taught myself basically and at 55 know a little about this thing, but this has got me really baffled. Reciently I noticed that some of my programe were not working well and things were slowing down, so I decided to re-install my copy of windows XL Professional. This I did and in the process I reinstalled from the disc a "FAT32" ? and platform. ( Heard that it worked faster and better for the net ) ??
Anyway it seemed to work well and I am getting much better results, BUT....On closing down the machine and re-starting I now have the oppurtrunity to open either The Professional XL or the Home XL, this I don't understand, what have I done ? because I thought that the Home XL had been formatted and wiped, but there both now still there and the home version still doesn't work as well as the Professional one does but Like I said, I don't quite know what I am doing, so could someone tell me what it is I have done ?? Do they just both work side by side ? or what? ...Thanks in advance...

I'm assuming by Windows XL you actually mean Windows XP

Sounds like you created a dual-boot system: Windows XP Pro installed on one partition and Windows XP Home installed on another partition.

I'm not sure how having the drive formatted as a FAT32 would have any effect on the speed of the Internet connection...you probably were experiencing slow load times for applications and web pages due to other reasons.

First off, go to Start -> My Computer and note the Hard Disk Drives section. If you browse through the drives listed and notice that there is a Windows folder in more than one, you definitely have more than one instance of Windows installed.

You can go to Computer Management within the Administrative Tools folder in the Control Panel to delete that partition.

Otherwise, to remove the option from the bootup screen, try the following: http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_remove_...nger_want .htm l

It maybe easier to just reinstall Windows again, only this time, during setup, delete all partitions and then create a new partition with all the available disk space and install Windows on that partition.

The options you are seeing are known as the Advanced Boot Menu. This is controlled by the file C:\boot.ini.

1. Open a Command Prompt window by clicking Start, Run... and entering cmd in the Run... dialog box.
2. Create a backup file in case there are issues.
   copy C:\boot.ini C:\bootini.bak
3. Next, remove the default attributes from the file so that you can edit it. Use the command:
   attrib -r -h -s C:\boot.ini
4. Next, open the file in Notepad to edit it. You can do this from the command prompt you have open.
   notepad.exe C:\boot.ini
5. This file is divided into sections. The second section should have a [Operating Systems heading. Each of the lines below this heading are options that appear on your Advanced Boot Menu. You can simply remove any one that you don't want. The correct one should look something like this:
   multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
   
   You can easily determine which one is correct by looking at the rest of the file. Here is an example file (don't copy this as it isn't made for your system!) Notice how the parts in red match. Your file should do the same.
   
   Code:

   [boot loader]
   timeout=5
   default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
   [operating systems]
   multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

   
   Once you've determined which entry to keep, simply delete the entire line for the extra one.
6. Save and close the boot.ini file. Exit Notepad.
7. Go back to your Command Prompt and return the proper settings.
   attrib +r +h +s C:\boot.ini
8. Reboot your system for changes to take effect.

If you don't feel comfortable editing the boot.ini file directly, you can use Microsoft's System Configuration Utility instead.

1. Choose Start, Run... and enter msconfig in the Run... dialog box to start the System Configuration Utility.
2. Select the Boot.ini tab.
3. Click the Check All Boot Paths button. You may receive an error like the following:
   
   If you do, just choose Yes.
4. Choose Apply and Close to exit the System Configuration Utility. You will see a message box like the following:
   
5. You may click Restart to restart you computer or you may choose Exit Without Restart to restart later. Changes will take affect after your next reboot.

Thanks for the help, I can see what I havce done now although I am not sure how I did it still ? Must have clicked yes when I should have clicked no ! AND yes I was so frustrated and cnfused it was XP, not even my typos are that bad , hehehe ! Thanks again, I think I will take your advice and re-install again and read all the instructions closer this time ! before clicking anything to quickly.