Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Files Required to Boot Windows NT/2000/XP (x86 Platforms)

After the systems POST routine process was completely successful, then comes the process of booting up the Operating System. The Boot up process will fail if any of the following files are missing or corrupted.

NTLDR

Root directory of the startup disk

Boot.ini

Root directory of the startup disk

Bootsect.dos

Root directory of the startup disk

Ntdetect.com

Root directory of the startup disk

Ntbootdd.sys (for SCSI only)

Root directory of the startup disk

Ntoskrnl.exe

%SystemRoot%%\System32

Hal.dll

%SystemRoot%\System32

The\SYSTEM registry hive

%SystemRoot%\System32\Config

Device drivers

%SystemRoot%\System32\Drivers


The file "Bootsect.dos" is required only in multi-boot systems.

Also it is possible to boot linux and unix systems through the NT Loader.

Copy the first sector of your root linux into a file in the NT/2000 partition and name the file, for example, C:\Bootsect.inx (by analogy to C:\Bootsect.dos)

Then edit the boot.ini file as follows.
C:\BOOTSECT.LNX="Linux"

4 comments:

  1. Thanks a lot. This help me a lot

    ReplyDelete
  2. Man u are simply great, these questions made my interview clear. Thanks a million

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice summary of windows.

    Strange that the windows os came out with version 3 yet 30 years later it still manages to get worse each time they release anything new! =)

    ReplyDelete