Bill
Mon Mar 31 02:09:28 PDT 2008
David Webb wrote:
> I think you misunderstand it's usage. The NT boot disk is not like the DOS
> boot disk. It's only purpose is to bypass the normal startup from the HDD.
> It
> does not contain an OS itself.
OK, and this was leading me to wonder just how much use it really is (I'm
coming at this from a Win9x and DOS user standpoint). But the MS article
mentions some things that can go wrong on the HD where this could be handy,
although, in retrospect, I'm not sure how often those specific cases really
come up (in contrast with the cases where you need a "real" boot disk (to
repair the system, more like BartPE, or whatever)
> Regarding a DOS boot disk, similar to Win98's, it cannot natively read an
> NTFS
> formatted drive, but there are 3rd party utilities available that can be
> used
> to read and write NTFS files while in the DOS environment.
Right, and I know of (and have) a few of those utilities. NTFS4DOS and
NTFSDOS30 come to mind. (Although some of these are read-only).
> This approach has
> mostly been replaced by the use NT rescue discs similar to BartPE and
> UBCD4WIN, which not only bootup from the CD, providing complete access to
> the mounted HDD, but they also contain many of the utilities necessary for
> repair
> and backup of an NT HDD.
Right. I also have BartPE (but have only tried it out a couple of times
so far - no real need, as of yet :-).
Thanks for the info, Dave.
> "Bill in Co." <not_really_here@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:O86bI$skIHA.980@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> Yes, it talks about a faulty boot sequence (which is slightly ambiguous).
>> But I have used DOS formatted bootup disks before, and my question was
>> very
>> specific about this type of bootdisk, and if my assumptions below were
>> correct (about using this type of boot disk over the other DOS formatted
>> boot disk, which I'm pretty sure won't (normally) allow access to NTFS).
>>
>> David Webb wrote:
>>> Refer to the section titled "Resolving startup issues with a boot floppy
>>> disk"
>>> in the following tech article:
>>>
>>> How to create a bootable floppy disk for an NTFS or FAT partition in
>>> Windows
>>> XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=305595
>>>
>>> "Bill in Co." <not_really_here@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>>> news:eZjL2NskIHA.748@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>>>> philo wrote:
>>>>> "Lang Murphy" <lang_murphy@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>>>>> news:89D20A14-FFA1-4A80-B4F1-5E57A20E8667@microsoft.com...
>>>>>> "Michael" <nospam@email.com> wrote in message
>>>>>> news:O7LhyUVkIHA.5080@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>>>>>>> the floppy has XP
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Uh... what? Never heard of a bootable XP floppy. Most likely, you
>>>>>> have a
>>>>>> DOS bootable diskette with drivers to access FAT32 and/or NTFS disks.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What errors are you getting when you try to boot from the disk?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Lang
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> What OS does the floppy have on it?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> -Frank
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> If you format a floppy on an XP machine then copy over the "boot"
>>>>> files
>>>>> ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini the floppy will boot you right
>>>>> into XP
>>>>> .
>>>>>
>>>>> Since Vista uses a different boot loader that boot floppy cannot work
>>>>> for
>>>>> booting into Vista
>>>>
>>>> Interesting. I have a general question regarding the use of this
>>>> specific
>>>> boot floppy. Can I assume the only time it could be useful is if one
>>>> or
>>>> more of the three files (ntldr, ntdetect.com, boot.ini) on the hard
>>>> disk is
>>>> corrupted or missing? Or are there some other possible situations
>>>> that
>>>> would allow it to boot where the HD wouldn't?