Ideally you would have an independent booting environment/utility with GUI for ease of use eg boot disk, bootable USB flash drive with which to access your mums XP even it was unbootable itself, but i dont think its required
U R right it is a dual boot - but I gather its causing a problem/inconvenience or you could just leave it. Obviously how long before XP boots and if a selection has to be made to XP (if its the "DEFAULT" setting or not) are inconvenience.There are changes you can make to the boot file which will just make the choices disappear without changing them or physically deleting them but its hardly any more effort to delete as you know it was accidental etc.
Using an administer account make a back up of the boot.ini file - paste it anywhere you can access eg in the self booting media , another PC (but not in the root of anther XP drive just to even avoid the opportunity of overwriting that XPs boot.ini).
Location? If required in the(assuming the letter) C root aka your Mums installed XP the very top folder of the directory which includes the 'Windows' folder, files; ntdetect.com, 'ntldr' etc (hint NT=new technology, well it was after win98
.)
First check the file is writable; right click file > properties > ensure the (bottom) 'attributes' "read only" box is NOT ticked. You may wish to check the box after editing the file to (TRY to) protect it from being rewritten HOWEVER U must remember to uncheck the box again if/WHEN you want to edit the file again.
If U open double click the file it should automatically open with notepad.exe you might see something like;
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="XP" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Grimefighter" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
Carefully change the values described for each choice;
Assuming the boot menu automatically boots into XP ; change the timeout value to '0' (w/o hyphens). Result= boot menu disappears
Boot menu has to be changed to boot into XP. Under the [operating section] bit see what partition number "XP" is at then put that number in the partition number slot of the "default=" line under [boot loader] section.Result= XP (highlighted) + automatically selected at boot. Then change 'timeout' value as above to make boot menu disappear.
Delete grimefighter entry. First ensure XP is the default boot entry as above (or else it will be ambiguous, nothing to do with the cause, M$ XP boot error msgs C.I.T.Y
classic = "Hall..dll is MISSING" - when its still THERE
. Below the [operating system] section, completely delete the line containing between the quotes "Grimefighter".
At this point make another back up of the boot.ini you have just created for safety while you delete grimefighter, you can manually delete ( I assume you just delete its partition in Disk Management or similar partition software) the program OR perhaps automatically uninstall it in XP ?. Then check the boot.ini to make sure it hasn't change (if it has replace with/edit it to match the last back up - i have managed the XP boot.ini for around a decade so i do it like walking - so only in my communication should you next encounter problems booting up. U can always google/bing the XP boot.ini for someone to explain it better than me.
Good Luck.
PS . Old own boot.ini pre Win7 attached if of any illustrative use.Had to change the filetype .ini>.txt as .ini not an allowed attachment.
