Help with computer setup

[the Langolier]

A friend asked me to help them speed up their computer, so I loaded it up and saw that during startup it gives me the odd option of choosing an OS to load: Win XP Pro and Win XP Pro...

I went into system properties > startup/retore config. where I have the option to disable the startup prompt asking which OS to boot. That could work OK, but this computer does NOT need two OS's, not to mention both loaded up with XP. Apparently the HD has two partions, as I got this from the boot file:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

My question is what is the best thing to do? I do not know what deleting one of the partitions will do. Also, aside from skipping a step at startup, will clearing up this mess make the machine run faster in general? How does the second partition affect performance. (Mostly my friend is annoyed at how slow the computer is despite sufficient hardware - also she said it will sometimes lock up at startup and she has to manually powerdown)

Thanks

[Yrrek]

What I am assuming happened to cause the dual partition is when loading XP, whoever was doing this accidentally restarted the process when the computer rebooted instead of letting XP continue on its own, which is what I did. I have not found it to effect my computer speed. What mainly effects the speed is having more information on the drive, virus', and ad/spyware. Also a fragmented drive can be problematic. So before deleting either of those, I would delete programs not being used, run spyware removal and virus scanning programs, and then defrag. If that does not speed up the computer, you can try deleting one of those lines, but I do not know what it will do. Don't be surprised if you have to reinstall Windows.

[Occhidiangela]

What I am assuming happened to cause the dual partition is when loading XP, whoever was doing this accidentally restarted the process when the computer rebooted instead of letting XP continue on its own, which is what I did. I have not found it to effect my computer speed. What mainly effects the speed is having more information on the drive, virus', and ad/spyware. Also a fragmented drive can be problematic. So before deleting either of those, I would delete programs not being used, run spyware removal and virus scanning programs, and then defrag. If that does not speed up the computer, you can try deleting one of those lines, but I do not know what it will do. Don't be surprised if you have to reinstall Windows.
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First, save any data files that absolutely can't be lost.

Occhi

[Yrrek]

First, save any data files that absolutely can't be lost.

Occhi
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Oh yeah, forgot that step. =)