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I recently had the privilege of formatting 3 machines at my home and my parents' . I like to format my machine now and then but the family decided to upgrade their Operating Systems from the old Windows XP Professional to Windows 7 But, being family, they decided to get some hack to try reloading the OS first rather than wait for me :/ Well, he managed to install Windows 7 , but the boot menu had a little more to say.. There was a broken Windows XP Setup and good old "EARLIER VERSION OF WINDOWS" This means that he took the shortcut method of letting Windows 7 manage things rather than format the HDD. So what happens is, that every time I boot the machine, Instead of automatically loading Windows 7 , it shows me1. Earlier Version of Windows 2. Windows Professional XP Setup 3. Windows 7 Now, of course, we want Windows 7 to load automatically instead of seeing the Boot Menu each time. In my scenario, I used Command Prompt (bcdedit) to remove the entries but I don't recommend this to regular / novice users. The easiest method to configure startup and edit the boot.ini in a Windows 7 machine (Remember, windows 7 does not have a boot.ini, only XP and older have it, Windows 7 instead has bootmhgr.dll) is through a software called EasyBCD I wish I had screenshots You can download the free version of EasyBCD from their website by entering your name and email address - here When you run the software, it shows you information about your current boot menu. To remove entries for Windows XP (edit boot.ini) , you need to click Tools -> Edit Legacy Entries . Remove all the lines mentioning XP and save! Once you reboot, you will not be plagued by the boot Menu options. This software is really multi purpose, it will let you add / delete addtional Operating Systems to your Boot options, prioritize them so that you can directly load one OS instead of having to select it each time on boot. Definitely deserves 5 stars