Removing XP from Windows Boot Manager

The other day I figured I'd try installing XP on my Vista lappie. Unfortunately, I did not bother to read properly, and just went ahead and tried. Now one problem I have is that my DVD drive in the laptop has been wonky from the getgo. I also did not bother creating a second partition (d'oh).

Anyway, after starting the installation and going through the initial setup steps, my laptop started showing a new screen called Windows Boot Manager which showed the new XP setup, and was for some reason using that as a default boot. The end result was constant blue screens.

I eventually solved the problem by first having Vista display hidden folders and files, as well as OS files. Having done that, removing the XP entry is as simple as deleting the boot.ini file from the root folder of the drive. You can also remove the XP install folders called $WIN_NT$.~BT and $WIN_NT$.~LS.

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Security tab missing in XP

I was troubleshooting an annoying problem on my PC when I ran into another annoying problem. Whenever I wanted to check access rights to a specific folder, there was no "Security" tab available. Kind of makes it hard to determine whether the account has the proper permissions.

Here's how to solve it:

1) Open up Windows Explorer.
2) Tools -> Folder Options -> View
3) All the way at the bottom of the listbox under "Advanced settings", ensure “Use simple file sharing (Recommended)” is not checked.
4) Click OK, and check permissions at will.

(I can see why simple file sharing is recommended by default, but some form of indication would have been nice).

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