boot up/restart

Right click on My Computer --> Properties --> Advance tab --> Startup and Recovery.

You can delete the extra entry or change wait time from 30 to 0 for no wait.

 I don't get anything like this when I ask for proteries.

don't know what u mena by manually modify the c:\boot.ini file which is normally hidden.

Right click on My Computer --> Properties --> Advance tab --> Startup and Recovery.

You can delete the extra entry or change wait time from 30 to 0 for no wait.

You can also manually modify the c:\boot.ini file which is normally hidden.

Right click on My Computer and you should see options "Open/Explore/Search/Manage/.../Properties".

If you don't see option "Properties" your My Computer might have been infected as well.

If you can select Properties, you should see a small dialog box with 5 tabs at the top: "General | Network Identification | Hardware | User Profiles | Advanced"

If you don't see these tabs, I suggest you call Dell Support.

The manual update method.

Launch File explorer, select Options  --> Folder Options.

Uncheck "Hide System Files" option and click Apply.

This wil reveal the c:\boot.ini file.

Make a copy of the c:\boot.ini file with different name just in case you need to roll back.

Open c:\boot.ini file with Notepad.

If the default OS boot choice is already correct you can change the timeout value from 30 to 0 to simply skip the boot delay.

 Changing the timeout value is safe to keep everything intact.

This guarantees that you can boot and allows you to make changes to c:\boot.ini file again if needed.

If the two rows of OS choices are "identical", you can just delete one row. 

Save the change.

Go back to Folder Options and check the "Hide System files" option again and Apply to hide system files.

Reboot to see the change.

thanks for the quick reply. I was wrong. I do get that properties display in "my computer".

this is what is in the boot.ini

[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 /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
should I get rid of one of these or just change the 30 to 0 like you previously suggested?

It looks like you have two instances of XP installation, one on partition 1 (with Data Execution Protection), one on partition 2.

If you are not sure which one to keep and which one to remove, I suggest to play safe and just change the timeout value for now until you figure out XP instances.

yeah I'm not sure about which one to delete. I originally saw it in boot.ini by way of start run msconfig.

thanks again for your help.