How to get rid of "Please select the operating system to start", conflicts with Drive Image

My computer has one 80 gig hard drive, with 2 partitions. The C:\
drive has 10 gigs and has the operating system on it (Windows XP Pro),
and the rest of the drive's space is on D:/

My computer began having errors a few weeks ago, so I contacted the
guy who I bought the computer from, to fix it. He reinstalled
Windows, and all seemed to go well. But it turns out that he simply
installed a 2nd copy of Windows on drive D:\ and also left the
original install of Windows with the errors on it on drive C:\

So I contacted a friend who knows computers and told him the
situation, and he was able to fix the original install of Windows on
drive C:\ and erased the unwanted install of Windows from D:\

The computer works fine now, but now I'm stuck with "Please select the
operating system to start" whenever I boot the computer. There's 2
choices, and both say "Microsoft Windows XP Professional". I always
choose the first one. I'm afraid of what might happen if I choose the
2nd option, which would attempt to load an install of Windows thats no
longer there.

My friend told me that there's no way to get rid of this choice menu
on bootup.

I can live with the choice menu, but now I tried to use Drive Image
from a boot CD to make a backup of drive C:\ to image files on drive
D:\, so I can burn them on CDs, for a quick and easy recovery in the
event of a future catastrophe.

But Drive Image will not recognize the partitions of C:\ and D:\. It
only shows one partition with the drive letter of *

Is this because of the operating system choice menu? Or has the MBR
been changed when the choice menu was installed?

Here's my boot.ini
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Will erasing the 2nd choice from my boot.ini remove the choice menu
and allow Drive Image to recognize the 2 seperate partitions? Or do I
also have to use a program such as fdisk or gdisk to write a new MBR
to the hard drive? I'm concerned about doing this because.....will
writing a new MBR also make my partitions inaccessible?

Please respond with any advice you can give.