masahiro

Well, I did some more Google searching, and found a discussion on a forum that suggested that it would be perfectly OK to run 'fixmbr' despite the warning message. Apparently the warning does appear bc it detects the Linux OS as a problem. (?) SO: I ran 'fixmbr' on my computer, crossing my fingers and praying hard, and lo-and-behold IT WORKED! *whew* No more boot menu, and everything seems to be fully operational so far. Thanks for the insight, cluberti!

Well, I managed to create a slipstreamed SP2 CD by deleting some files from the SP1 CD. Unfortunately however, I can't seem to use it to access "Repair" -- when I hit "r," the computer just restarts. So, probably I did something bad when I was trying to create the slipstreamed CD. FYI: the files (folder) I deleted were, from the I386 folder -- SP1.CAT, SP1.CAB, SVCPACK.INF, and [sVCPACK]. I also deleted the folder [sBSI], as it was taking up a great deal of space, and appears to only be an instructional folder (?). IN ANY CASE: I suspect that the warning message I encountered (see my second post above) would still occur even if I used a SP2 CD (unless anybody feels otherwise?). So: the question remains -- how can I properly restore my computer to SP2 only? Should I run 'fixmbr' despite the warning? Should I just reinstall Windows? Etc...

I get an error message when I try to slipstream -- the guides I've looked at suggest that this is common occurrence with OEM CDs. E.g., the following is from this guide: However, I just came across what might be a possible solution to that problem -- so I'll try and see if that works.

Well, I tried running fixmbr from my SP1 CD today. Got the "nonstandard" / "invalid" table warning, so I cancelled the request. Does anybody have any idea: (1) why that warning is appearing, (2) whether it will be a bad idea to run fixmbr anyway, or (3) what a good solution would be to restore my system to just XP? FYI: the other OS on my system is Fedora Core 2 (I like it, but I don't like having a dual-boot system anymore -- prefer having separate machines with one OS on each machine), with the GRUB boot loader.

Suppose: -- I have a Windows XP Pro CD, at SP1. -- a dual-boot system; one of the OSs is XP Pro SP2 -- I want to use fixboot and fixmbr to restore the system to XP Pro SP2 only Can I use my SP1 CD to run fixboot and fixmbr to "fix" the SP2 system? Does anybody know for a fact whether that will work? Or is it possible that I might come across some errors? (Yes, I know that I could just create a "slipstreamed" CD, updated to SP2 -- problem is I can't do this with my copy of the XP SP1 CD, as it's an OEM CD.) If I can't use the SP1 CD to run fixboot and fixmbr to "fix" my SP2 system, what's a good alternative approach? Would it be a bad idea to uninstall SP2, run fixboot and fixmbr from the SP1 CD, and then reinstall SP2? Any advice you all can offer would be greatly appreciated!!