I took your advice and was able to reduce that 30 second countdown to 2 seconds. As to editing the start up file I have this in there now;

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

Now, one of those two "multi(0)...." entries is the one that was deleted on D: but I am not sure which, is it the "NoExecute=OptIn" the first one or the second that just ends with "fastdetect",

thanks again
Halder