How do i switch my laptop from the recovery partition boot to the regular hd?

[ronniebuss]

I found an article to switch the boot on my Gateway laptop running XP SP3 from the regular HD to the recovery partition. I went into the C prompt and typed compmgmt.somethingorother and changed the boot. It worked and the computer appeared to reinitialize. I needed to do this after the thing was screwed up by some bad software. The problem is the article is gone and the computer keeps trying to recover. How can I switch the boot back? I am super computer illiterate if you post a response. lol

 

[ksiemb]

I found an article to switch the boot on my Gateway laptop running XP SP3 from the regular HD to the recovery partition. I went into the C prompt and typed compmgmt.somethingorother and changed the boot. It worked and the computer appeared to reinitialize. I needed to do this after the thing was screwed up by some bad software. The problem is the article is gone and the computer keeps trying to recover. How can I switch the boot back? I am super computer illiterate if you post a response. lol

My guess is you modified the boot.ini file. To boot Windows normally, it should have an entry like
"multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\Windows="Microsoft Windows x32 " /fast detect." and it must be the 1st entry after [operating systems]
Boot into safe mode:
To access boot.ini file:
Clcik Start > Run > then type "msconfig" without the quotes in box.
Click the bootini Tab
You can highlight that entry and click the "Move up" button so it is 1st under
[operating systems]
Click ok to exit. -

In the future, don't mess with things ! :lol:

 

[ronniebuss]

I can't get the laptop to do anything but boot to the recovery partition. It has a screen with the F2 or F10 prompt for boot options or set up options. Neither of those options gets me to any type of prompt. If I let it keep booting, it goes to the recovery screen with only 2 options....proceed with the recovery with either save or don't save your data, or cancel and then it just cycles through through to the recovery screen again.

 

[ksiemb]

I can't get the laptop to do anything but boot to the recovery partition. It has a screen with the F2 or F10 prompt for boot options or set up options. Neither of those options gets me to any type of prompt. If I let it keep booting, it goes to the recovery screen with only 2 options....proceed with the recovery with either save or don't save your data, or cancel and then it just cycles through through to the recovery screen again.

Pressing the F8 key immediately during boot doesn't take you to safe mode ?
Pressing the F2 key immediately during boot doesn't take you to Setup ?
Have Windows CD to boot from ?